


Singularity

by paleogymnast



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 11:02:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11416578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paleogymnast/pseuds/paleogymnast
Summary: Thousands of years ago, humans left Earth and traveled to the stars. Hundreds of years later, humans left Earth once again, and founded a new home, New Terra. New Terra exists in peace, but danger lurks in her past, and the calm is nothing but a paper-thin illusion. War is returning—a centuries-old conflict between humans and "Pios," the pioneers who left earth hundreds of years before the settlers of New Terra. Will Jensen unlock the mystery of his past? Will Special Agent Jared Padelecki find the traitor responsible for the worst act of terrorism in New Terra's history? Or will their shared secrets push them towards a deeper hidden truth?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lightthesparks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightthesparks/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art for Singularity](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/305352) by lightthesparks. 



> Please check out the AMAZING and beautiful art for this story created by lightthesparks on livejournal, here: [Art Master Post](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/117919.html)

_Singularity: “something that is singular: such as, a : a separate unit; b : unusual or distinctive manner or behavior  
… “a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole_

_… “is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.”_

Prologue

Spring on New Terra had never been so full of life. All throughout the temperate zones, birds chirped, flowers bloomed, and the sun shone down through clear skies and puffy clouds, warming the earth and seas below. Jewel-toned insects with glittering, iridescent wings took to the air, while gentle breezes gusted and blustered around the globe, moderating the sun's warmth even as the planet's tilt and orbit moved the most populous hemisphere closer to the sun as the calendar ticked away towards the promise of summer. On old Earth, the equivalent month of the solar calendar would have been May in that planet's Northern Hemisphere, but here it was more commonly known as Fives. And Fives brought with it the promise of new hope and renewal even in the lofty towers and spires of shimmering steel and unbreakable glass that made up New Terra's most populous city, Minkata.

It was just after noon, midday, even though the precise length of New Terra's rotation differed slightly from humanity's original home, the old names and terms had stuck. And throughout the business and government districts, people were breaking for lunch. People flooded from the smaller buildings, taking to the streets for quick strolls or maybe a jog along one of the city's pedestrian pathways that flanked the city's seven rivers. Schools let out for lunch, encouraging their pupils to explore and take in the pristine air and natural light. 

In the towering skyscrapers including the magnificent Minkabra Tower, 215 floors of courtrooms, offices, museums, retail malls, and archives, workers picnicked on the many garden floors, basked in the gentle spray of one of the clear-walled central atrium's fountains, or took one of the many elevated trams out to favorite lunch spots in the city below.

In the central atrium on the 175th floor of the Minkabra tower a little girl in a sunny floral dress, a style not out of place on the Earth of millennia ago, ran from the express lift tugging on one mother's hand as across the open expanse in front of a great glass doorway leading to the offices of a giant tech conglomerate, her other mother dropped to one knee with open arms to greet her. A happy family on a lunch date. 

All around the people smiled and argued about whose team was suffering the most in the current football standings, while others looked forward to the promise of warm days and nights to come, and the pleasure of vacations and hiking and engaging in all sorts of antiquated-but-fun activities that would always be the province of warmer weather. 

The people were happy and carefree, gone from their minds were any thoughts of conflict or strife, and certainly no recollection of unrest or wars, uprising by revolutionary aliens. New Terra had its problems like any time and place, but it was a largely peaceful world basking in success and good weather. 

In another version of that summer day, a slender man in a black suit and black tie with a black briefcase and black gloves exited the elevator across from the smiling young girl in the flower dress. He would have seemed striking, but not out of place, maybe briefly memorable for his adherence to traditional norms of formality--black suiting stood out on the sea of lighter colors and summer-weight woolene--but not out of place. He would have crossed the atrium and paused next to a sculpture of slender, silvery spheres intertwined and linked to create sweeping arcs suggestive of birds in flight or planetary orbits. He would have paused for a moment and moved on leaving behind an unusual shimmering sphere within a square, poised precariously on the corner of the plinth on which the sculpture stood. No one would have really noticed it, except maybe the little girl when one of her mothers picked her up and twirled her around. But even she would have had a difficult time describing it or confirming what she was seeing because there was something about this glittering object that was shifting, shrouded, and impossible to see. In that other version of the world the man in black would have already been on his way down the express lift, and thirty seconds later he would have been out of the building whisking away on one of the moving walkways that crisscrossed the ground, far, far from the girl and her happy family strolling to their picnic lunch in the airy atrium. He would have been long gone when he flipped open his right glove and pressed a button tucked in close to his wrist.

But that other world didn't happen. The man wasn't there that day at noon on the ides of Fives, while the little girl and her family ate their lunch in the joyful spring sun.

But that world was not so far from this one. 

That night, as stars sparkled against a velvet black sky and the air cooled off in a reminder that summer was not yet upon the more populous hemisphere of New Terra, stargazers looked up at the sky and marveled at the light of distant suns long since gone nova or perhaps collapsed into black holes. 

Not far from Minkabra tower, stood a cluster of three gracefully, arcing spires. Well over 100 stories each, the Citygate apartments housed politicians and newscasters, teachers and students, newcomers and old residents; there were five hotels for those passing through, and corporate dorms for some of the most intensive employers. While people dreamed of the bright days ahead and slumbered in the beds, a man in a black suit and black tie with a black briefcase and black gloves did come. We don't know if anyone saw him, not for sure, but probably someone did, and they likely thought he looked a bit odd and out of place. Especially on the 100th floor of the third spire, where his formality was definitely out of place against the sleepy college students who called that floor their home.

In the wee hours of the morning he would have looked out of place even on the 110th floor of the first spire where the very young girl and her parents slept tucked in their beds while their community of businesspeople with families dreamed of the exhilaration to come in warmer months, inside their homes swaddled in pyjamas.

But the man came and paused, this time in front of a scale model of the Minkabra district of Minkata. And when he stepped away to enter the express lift that whisked him off down to the expressway tram line that departed from the 15th floor, there was a strange glittering, shimmering sphere inside a square there, but not there, impossible to look at and even harder to ignore perched at the corner of the diorama. But no one was awake to look. And one minute and eight seconds later as the expressway tram crossed an invisible line one mile from the third tower of the Citygate apartments, only a handful of sleepy and busy travelers, shared the man's tram car.

The man flicked open his right glove and counted to three. He pressed a shallow domed button on a watch-like device affixed to the inside of his right wrist.

There were no screams. There was no noise. But for a moment the sphere inside the square seemed to shift--

And then the Citygate apartments and their team stations, most of Minkabra tower, and the lower buildings around them, the tramways, and the moving sidewalks, and the schools and the parks, everything within a one mile radius of the 110th floor of the third spire was sucked inward, across the shimmering event horizon compressed to nothing in the infinite pull of infinite gravity.

On the tram, it didn't really seem like anything was wrong, but the tram slowed suddenly, as it too was pulled towards the unseen point. As people roused from their late-night ruminations to see what was going on, the emergency breaks kicked in and slowed the tram to a gliding, if abrupt stop. 

It was dark, and for a moment, there was nothing. Then the rushing of air and a pop as all that had been ceased to be, disappearing into the uncertainty of warped spacetime. The pop was followed by a roar, and then the first of the secondary explosions as severed air, water, fuel, and energy lines gave way, mixing in ways that were never intended. The blasts lit up the night sky, showing empty space and a giant crater carved into the surface of New Terra, surrounded by jagged remains of ripped-apart buildings, their edges sparking in some places, spaghettified in others as if reaching out for the epicenter of the sudden implosion. Then the top five stories of Minkabra tower, stretched and twisted as they had been pulled to that unseeable point, came crashing down, their supports suddenly absent, as the twisted hulk of shatterproof glass and metal impacted the catered earth below with the force of a meteor. 

Then the people screamed. 

And as the other broken shells of buildings that once held life and work and hope went crashing over into the new abys, the people remembered those distant wars and threats and uprisings and the words in the New Terra Constitution that warned humanity of the threat at its door. 

The man in the black suit and the black tie looked down at the button on his wrist, and refastened his glove. He picked up his black briefcase and strode to the emergency door release, smashing it and forcing open the door, as every eye in the tram car turned towards him, taking in every detail of his being, he stepped out of the tram car and dropped away, disappearing into the night.

~~~

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Noooooooooooooooooooo!"

Someone was screaming.

He couldn't breathe, he couldn't move. He kept seeing his fingers hovering over the button, press, wait, close the glove, and the sudden stillness followed by cacophony.

_It wasn't me._

The screams grew louder. He wanted to cover his ears, but he couldn't move. His lungs burned with the need for air.

_It wasn't me!_

Look. Push. Pause. Flick.

_It wasn't **me**!_

_He_ was screaming. Only now that he realized it, he understood he was trapped in a nightmare. Reliving the moment over, and over, and over again.

Look. Push. Pause. Flick.... _Silence_... Boom!

He ran out of air, and his eyes shot open. His body tried to jackknife in bed, but he was still in the grip of sleep paralysis. Flailing, he blinked, panic and darkness giving way to the too-still pale blue light of early morning. His lungs began to heave, trying to remember how to breathe as if something had been actively suppressing their ability and they were relearning the process of pulling air into his body. 

"It wasn't me. It wasn't me. It wasn't me. It wasn't me," he said over and over and over again. His hands shook, and he was drenched in sweat, but he couldn't stop the mantra. 

"It wasn't me."

Maybe if he said it enough times he would believe himself.

~~~

**Newscaster:** Today marks the second anniversary of the Minkata Incident, the most devastating act of terrorism recorded on New Terra since the Exclusion Accord marked the end of the Pioneer Wars two millennia ago. On planetary date 5117.05.13 over five million New Terran citizens were killed instantly when an implosion device was detonated in the city's Minkabra district. Another ten million sustained wounds as a result of that event, of which an estimated 500,000 have since succumbed to their injuries. The insurgent terrorist organization Pioneers Free Dominion or PFD, claimed responsibility for the attack, which also destroyed over 100 buildings including the Citygate Apartments, Minkabra Tower, University of Minkata Medical School, Unity Tram Station, and Bluestream Government Complex. More than one thousand other buildings and infrastructure were damaged and the incident left a crater 500 meters deep spanning over half the Minkabra district and neighboring Bluestream and Unity Park Districts. The overall damage has been estimated to be at least 400 Trillion New Terran Credits, but many economists and infrastructure experts say the actual cost is likely in excess of five killotrillion, that is five thousand trillion credits.

The terrorist organization known as Pio Liberation Fraternity or PLF has claimed responsibility, but since the early days of our new world, we have known the identity of the man who waltzed into the heart of our planet and detonated a bomb, the likes of which have never been seen before. That man is Jensen Ross Ackles, and today marks the second anniversary that this murderous monster has been at large.


	2. Part I

_The Minkata Incident was a turning point. If you hadn’t formed an opinion about Pios before the Citygate Singularity, you sure as hell did after._

_What shocked so many of us was that Pios still existed in one form or another after all these years. What happened to the stories of eradication? Did anyone realize they could interbreed with humans, infecting our species with their unnatural, alien gifts, while making them harder to find? Why did we only learn about the “Pio Problem” after it imploded in our faces?_

_One thing is for sure, the Central Authority owes the people an explanation._

_~ Cala Slightington, Bluestream District, Editorial_

Part I

Jared had been a special agent for almost fifteen years now. He’d begun just after graduating from college, and had since completed two additional degrees in the course of his work. Interesting as he found the theory and philosophy behind law enforcement, he never thought of himself as much of an academic.

Whenever he was in the lab or the study, he just desperately wanted to get out in the field again.

He wanted to solve crimes. He wanted to understand what made people tick.

He had never given much thought to counterterrorism. To be honest, it wasn’t a very big part of the world. New Terrans had petty squabbles, and some not-so-petty squabbles. But they had never resorted to true war or infighting. The people were too bonded by too many years of a common enemy.

Of course, then _it_ happened.

Minkata. A huge section of the planet’s most populous city, just gone. People dying. Screaming. And it all happened under the cover of darkness. At night. Ina residential area, while people were home in their beds. Sleeping, defenseless.

Jared Padalecki had never given much thought to counterterrorism, but then again he’d never given much thought to Pios or their ridiculous organization the PLF, which he had honestly believed to be mostly old men trying to sound sufficiently retro and scaring up interest for fundraising.

He’d never believed there were actually Pios on New Terra. It was such a complete violation of the law, their history, culture. How could there still be Pios after all this time?

But then they went and killed five million people, so the question was rather moot. Someone had wished them harm, and the people who took responsibility all tested positive for alien DNA.

Only it wasn’t _people_ who committed the atrocity. From what anyone could tell it was one man. One man who showed up on surviving video feeds and surveillance. One man who jumped from a tram three stories off the ground. One man who pressed a button and the world went boom.

One man responsible, at the center of it all. One man, who after frantic comparisons and digging and eyewitness accounts and digital reconstructions, they had an ID:

Jensen Ross Ackles.

All the pictures on record of him were at least a decade (probably more) out of date, depicting a slender, pretty teenager with freckles. He looked so _human_ , but if there was one thing the DNA evidence on the button itself—which had at some point been disconnected from his body and later found by canines with engineered noses—proved it was that Jensen Ackles was anything but human.

Oh, certainly, one of his parents had likely been human, but the other was a purebred Pio. Where had that person come from? 

Some people in the agency thought it meant the Pios had come back. Perhaps, when Jensen was a child they attempted to blend and then he at some point went off the grid when they were found out, or it was too difficult for Jensen to pass… it was the only theory that offered a satisfactory explanation, and Jared, and his superiors loved those.

Shortly after the Minkata incident, as it was commonly called, Jared began getting pulled into the investigation. It seemed that _everyone_ at the Agency was working terrorism or counterterrorism full time, with special task forces assigned to investigate and combat Pio tolerance groups and human sympathizers, surveil and investigate neighborhoods where Pios were believed to hide, targeting and shutting down businesses that made it possible for Pios to move undetected through the human population. Within one week of the incident, Jared had been assigned to counterterrorism full time. Nine months after the incident, he was assigned to the had been on the taskforce for over a year, working hard, chasing down every lead, interviewing and re-interviewing every possible witness, scanning surveillance logs, and watching the liverecords of engineered service animals and the data of CAPS (Central Authority Permanent Servants, usually Pios with a high percentage of human ancestry who for one reason or another the Central Authority had agreed to spare from exile or execution in favor of utilizing their physical labor). He worked, tirelessly, day in, day out, until time blurred together. But no matter how many leads he tracked down or how many new avenues for investigation he identified, it seemed that nothing panned out. They were no closer to locating Jensen Ackles than they had been the morning after the explosion.

It was the two-year anniversary today, and Jared had hoped by this milestone they would have solid progress to report, something to offer the people of Minkata and Bluestream and Unity Park some closure. But they had nothing to show for their efforts. Just a pile of dead-ends and contradictions.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the powers that be had opted to move Jared to Ingsport, a suburb of the planetary capital Terropoli. The reassignment came down two days before the anniversary and gave Jared only 48 hours to relocate and zero sympathy at the logistical nightmare of trying to get himself and his assorted belongings moved halfway down the content with limited notice while security warnings and the related procedures were at an all-time high. Jared knew he wasn’t a scapegoat, he wasn’t really even a fall guy. He was one of the more junior agents who had been “permanently” reassigned to the task force, many of his colleagues had over 25 years with the agency, since everyone wanted to be the one to find the monster that destroyed the peace and reminded the world that Pios remained a threat. And Jared had been vocal, at times very vocal, about his ideas and leads, and seeing as they hadn’t panned out… It was expected that he’d find himself shuffled out of the way.

Ingsport was idyllic looking, at least. Upon his first impression of the town, it reminded him of a story from a historical novel with single family houses and little yards, adorable cottages, tree-lined streets, and babbling streams. 

Of course, it wasn’t all pastoral bliss, especially not so close to Terropoli’s towering sprawl. The closer in towards the city one got, the more derelict and industrial the buildings became, solarsourced lighting and synthstone pavement giving way to sickly green glowpanels and simcrete as far as the eye could see.

Special Agent Jared Padalecki walked into the central lobby of the Terran Coordinated Investigation and Intelligence Atency office in Ingsport. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting with the transfer, but something so claustrophobic certainly wasn't it.

For the past seven years Jared had been stationed in the Agency’s main office in Minkata. The office was originally located in the Minkata district on a span of floors in the top third of the Minkabra tower. The office was light and airy with transparent outer walls and small garden patios on the lower floors where workers could go and enjoy the open air without having to leave the building or wait for the long express lift down to ground level. There was a private tram station just for agency personnel with regular express service to several other government buildings, including the auxiliary criminal court, the Bazathi detention center, two universities, the city governance plaza, and the local air and spaceport. The internal offices were evenly dispersed among open spaces, lobbies, conference rooms, meeting areas, and the office walls were all transparent glass. Sure, they could all be opaqued when needed, even the outer walls, but the overall effect was relaxing, open. While the work of investigating some of the biggest crimes and greatest threats to New Terra could weigh on one's soul, the office environment went a long way towards relieving that burden.

After Citygate and the havoc that ensured, even the Agency’s auxiliary offices had been damaged, enough so that the agency had to vacate the space and everyone was packed up and shipped, files and all, to work in an old office complex just outside the city proper, away from the damage in Minkata, Bluestream, and Unity Park. 

If the original office complex had been bright and airy, the Interim Headquarters were positively idyllic. The campus, and it was a campus, complete with low-set buildings stationed around a central grassy field with flowering fruit trees and natural streams augmented by human-crafted waterfalls, was all old-fashioned natural wood and clean stone. There was nothing synthetic; even the furniture in each room with their vaulted ceilings, was made from natural fibers and conserved woods, with a smattering of stone and polished metal and glass rounding out the decor. It had reminded Jared of some sort of conservationist's testimonial set up to prove the longevity and simplicity of natural things, the merits of the Old Ways. He'd heard the buildings were the original headquarters of the Agency. And while he was not certain if it was true, he could wholeheartedly believe it. Some of the wood and accents used appeared to be oak and silk, materials alien to New Terra that must have come from _Earth_ , suggesting the buildings may have been around for hundreds of years. 

Being outside the city limits provided peace and tranquillity and calm among the chaos and demands of the ongoing investigation. The natural, ancient, wild feeling was further enhanced by the small copse of trees just outside the electronic gate and the fields of wildflowers that grew all around the complex without any apparent human intervention. While their day-to-day job was serious and at times soul-crushing with the exhausting hunt for the worst terrorist the world had ever known, at least the environment was light and bright and uplifting.

But now that Jared was paying the price for his superiors’ displeasure it appeared his environment was suited to reinforce his shame and failure. 

The Ingsport office was a claustrophobic, drab office space that felt more like a prison, than a workplace. That he probably should have expected. After all, he had been taken off the greatest case of his career, anyone's career, to do whatever backwater tasks they needed here. Punishment details weren't known to be pretty.

But as he passed several drably dressed, vacant-looking workers in the halls, he felt vaguely alarmed. Surely the work wasn’t that… unrewarding? It was only when he noticed the tell-tale glint of a pinkish silvery scar, arcing in a crescent along the back of one worker’s neck, that he realized these weren’t Agency employees but CAPS. He didn’t know the Agency _used_ CAPS. They certainly weren’t permitted around any of the taskforce’s work. Given that Jensen Ackles had once _been_ a CAPS and had somehow escaped and there was legitimate concern that he might be able to influence their cerebral architecture. So, while CAPS provided efficient labor, it just wasn’t worth the risk.

With a sigh, and sinking feeling of resignation, Jared stepped out of the doorway and crossed the room to what appeared to be the supervisory office. "Special Agent Jared Padalecki responding for reassignment, sir," he said as he stepped into the doorway.

There was a man sitting behind a desk in a chair with his back to the door. The chair turned slowly, and Jared barely suppressed a gasp when he realized who was in the chair. "Deputy Director Sheppard." 

Sheppard looked up, scowling somewhat, Jared assumed in reaction to his lack of decorum.

"I'm sorry, sir, I was just surprised that you were assigned here. Surely they can't blame you for the lack of progress in locating Ackles, every stride we've made, all the leads and evidence we've recovered have been because of your leadership. If there's anything I can do to put in--"

But Sheppard was holding up his hand in the universal gesture for "stop" and his scowl had grown more severe. Jensen resisted the urge to step back and bow his head, but he had a feeling if he wasn't in enough trouble before, he was now. Just when Jared thought he couldn't take it any longer, Sheppard's scowl tugged at the corners of his mouth and turned into a smile.

"Is that what you think is happening here? That you've been sent here for punishment detail?"

"Well I assumed sir, and Smith implied--" 

"Smith doesn't know what he's talking about. He's also jealous, and like you he was not privy to any details of the reason behind our sudden move. He simply let his imagination run wild," Agent Sheppard said, cutting Jared off.

"And you didn't bother to clear up my misconceptions?" Jared surmised, still confused, feeling a stab of betrayal.

"Operational security," Sheppard offered.

Jared crossed his arms. "So why am I really here, or is that still outside my clearance?" Jared asked.

Sheppard pushed his chair back and gestured towards the empty seats on the far side of his desk. "Sit."

Jared crossed towards the chair.

"And close the door behind you."

Jared complied, finding the door heavier than expected. It closed with a satisfying thud. He sank into the chair, almost sliding off the seat as he found it had far more give than expected. "So why are we here, if it's not for punishment?"

Sheppard stared at the door, unspeaking, until the _snick_ of the security lock engaging sounded. “Your leads have been a lot better than Agency Oversight has let on. It took six months of sifting through hardcopy records that miraculously escaped destruction at three different archive facilities, but we were able to confirm that Deputy Minister Ackles _is_ Jensen Ackles’ father.”

Jared blanched at that news. The Deputy Minister for Internal Security was an outspoken advocate for increased screenings to detect Pios and harsher penalties for Pios identified, and a vocal supporter of using cerebral architecture and CAPS sentencing as a means to combat and deter human sympathizers. Jared had suspected the link after he’d found the most recent picture of Jensen in a government ID cache from the outlying provinces and noticed the now Deputy Minister had been assigned to spaceport and costal security in the same province at the time the photo was taken. But he’d thought it was a stretch. To hear it was confirmed… “Do we know if he’s a hardliner because he was duped into fathering Ackles or is he a hardliner to try to make up for the fact that he contributed to the conception of illegal offspring?”

Sheppard spread his hands and shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. It’s something of a miracle we found what little information we did. Someone certainly tried to burry the connection. Whether it was the Deputy Director, Ackles himself, someone else in the PLF, or someone trying to protect the Deputy Director, we don’t know. All we do know is that it raises serious concerns regarding how Ackles escaped detection until he was a teenager came to have a government ID in the first place and adds to our list of questions about how he was selected for the CAPS program and eventually neutralized the programming in his architecture. Needless to say, we need to keep this quiet. Any continued inquiry into this line of connection could not happen in the central office.”

Jared nodded slowly. “So we moved _here_ , where there are actual CAPS running around?”

“That’s part of the cover,” Sheppard replied.

“Cover for what?”

“Well it sure makes this look like a punishment detail; you were certainly duped,” Sheppard snarked with a small chuckle, but his smile fell and expression sobered. “Three days ago we received a tip that Jensen Ackles was in Ingsport, living, working, going undetected, passing as a human.”

“How could he be _working_?” Jared interrupted. If there was one thing most of the task force had agreed upon it was that Ackles must be getting support either from human sympathizers, unsuspecting charity (which would likely put him in the outer provinces since everyone and everywhere on the prime continent required screenings prior to access to charity services), or the PLF’s vast network believed to consist of spies, thieves, and black marketeers. No one, even Jared, had really believed he could be passing as human, pretending to be a productive member of society.

“There are some occupations that are _more vulnerable_ than others… certain agricultural positions, maintenance and service work, janitorial occupations, some remote research and analysis positions. They all either have less scrutiny in the employment screening and verification process, incomplete adoption of approved screening principles, or the way in which the work and screening is conducted is vulnerable to hacking,” Sheppard offered.

“But we went through and dismissed that when I brought it up, originally. Agriculture and janitorial have low scrutiny but large proximity to CAPS, so he should have shown up on the liverecord datastreams. Maintenance and service positions with incomplete adoption are all off-continent in the outlying provinces and while we think Ackles has support there, between the scrutiny on the transoceanic travel, the border controls, and the blanket drone and recorder coverage, in two years, we would have spotted him. And that leaves select research and analysis positions that require advanced degrees and specific skills a Pio terrorist ex-CAPS isn’t going to have!” Jensen protested.

Sheppard pushed a sheet of opaque hard copy across his desk towards Jared. It was just black text on white paper. No hint of data enhancement, not even color or a photo.

Jared looked down at the paper and up at Sheppard.

Sheppard nodded and twitched the paper towards Jared.

Jared looked down at the paper again and blinked. “An anonymous source says Ackles was on the team that _developed_ the singularity bomb?” he read, voice rising in surprise. “Ackles studied and developed implementation strategies.” He looked up at Sheppard again, jaw slack with surprise. “Who’s the source? How reliable?”

“The _who_ is above even my pay grade. But I do know the source has been vetted by Operations and the Central Authority and is considered to be extremely reliable,” Sheppard sighed. “There’s more information we’ve been keeping it strictly offline, nothing that could be intercepted or recorded. The crux of the matter is Jensen is highly educated and a fast learner. He has expert-level knowledge or training in several scientific disciplines, logistics, strategy, he was the PLF’s top contingency planner, which probably explains the change in tactics since the Minkata incident,” Sheppard explained.

“In other words, any of the jobs we ruled out as being too technical, Jensen could do them. He could really be here and _working_ , passing for human, blending in.”

Sheppard snatched back the paper and returned it to a file. “We’ve arranged a house for you. Start by approaching your neighbors. Get to know the community. Develop sources, informants. Use your skills and your _charm_ to endear them to you. Turn them into your eyes and ears. If Ackles is here, he’s probably in an area that doesn’t have drone coverage or CAPS with liverecorders. Be cautious. If he’s here somewhere, and we have every reason to think he is, he’s also _very_ smart and knowledgeable, and sources say he lived as a human for the first 15 years of his life and has been blending in staying below our notice since joining PLF a couple decades ago. Be _careful_ , Jared.”

“Just give me the address, sir, and I’ll get started,” Jared said as he stood.

~~~

Jensen went about his morning trying to ignore the newscaster’s words. He was tempted to turn off the omnipresent broadcast screen that filled one wall of the living room of his tiny office. Every time he saw that old picture, him as a teenager, the last picture taken as a free _human_ , before they’d known… before Central Authority had discovered his mother was a full blooded _Pio_ a descendant of the pioneers who had left the Earth of old and

~~~

Jared sighed and fell back into the strange bed in his new house. He’d never lived in a _house_ before, never lived so far from one of the sprawling urban apartment towers. It was supposed to help his hunt, being this close to all the government resources, but still having a quiet retreat where he could think, plan, without the constant press of the city, living close to where Jensen Ackles might be hiding.

He just hoped he caught a break before his superiors decided to make an example out of _him_. No matter what Sheppard said about his leads being strong, no matter how good a source provided the tip, it was still an impossible, uphill battle searching for the worst terrorist in New Terran history. He’d spent the rest of the day reviewing all the new _secret_ intel Sheppard had gathered, letting it percolate in his mind hoping for new ideas. He’d taken a hovercar ride and a stroll around his neighborhood after work, trying to get a feel for the place, develop a plan of attack.

Because try as he might, Jensen Ackles was a ghost. 

One bright spot, his new house in his new neighborhood on the new block came with a quiet, apparently shy, and somewhat bookish neighbor, always lost in his work, who seemed to dwell always indoors, without even the slightest curiosity at his new neighbor. Jared thought this, was definitely worth checking out. Jared had seen the guy twice while he was “supervising” the unloading of his belongings (and the multitude of cleverly concealed tech his superiors provided). Jared had no clue if the neighbor would prove useful or interesting on a case-related basis, but he certainly seemed more _intriguing_ than the other neighbors at the end of their small cul-de-sac. 

If nothing else he’d have an appealing visual distraction while he tried to find the New Terran enemy number one.


	3. Part II

_In my great, great, many more greats, great-grandparents' generation, the dreamers and speculative fiction writers of the day all imagined that if humanity ever made it to the stars we would be unified somehow, different. No more pesky squabbles over territory or philosophy or dogma, no more divisions based on religion or race or class, every story was the same story, humanity united. One government on Earth, a giant nation-state. The conflict, they thought, would come from outside. Aliens. Natural hazards of space travel. Maybe there would be some dispute between colonies and the people back home on Earth._

_They thought with all that space, we would learn how to get out of each other’s way._

_They were wrong._

_There's no unity on New Terra, no harmony, I've been there (I was born there), I would know. The Central Authority projects its image of peace while waging war on its own people, pitting district against district, province against province, and pretending they don’t know what goes on in the outlying Continents._

_People on this New Earth are still fighting over the same things they've fought about since before they_ were _people–land, water, food, air, who controls what and how they control it, who looks a certain way, sounds a certain way, and how they get to live their lives. Who gets to decide._

_Only now, the battle is secret, hidden from the masses, swept under the rug and out of the public eye. Worse, they’re not dividing us it based on any recognizable divisions that our ancestors would have understood. They’re doing it based on our_ humanity _, or rather who they say has it and who doesn’t._

_Never mind that my mother was human or that we’ve had fathers who were humans and important government officials at that. All of us have DNA that comes from humans—originally from Earth, old Earth. But our ancestors took a more roundabout way of getting from point a to point b. We fought. We survived. We were resourceful, and along the way, we blended with those around us, even when “around us” was far out in the stars. We thought our blending, our resilience and the new skills we gained gave us an advantage to share._

_The humans, for as they are so insistent, we are_ not _humans, cannot tolerate our presence. They banned us from New Terra, shipped our children off into deep space on a one-way ticket of “exile,” and murdered us left and right._

_Or at least that’s what they used to do. Now they take over our minds and control us. They say something about the “aliens” with whom we blended has made our minds more malleable. They catch us or trick us or bribe our families into allowing them to operate on us. When we are done, we are human and alien and computer. We have no rights. We have no sense of self. They can overwrite our memories or personality at any time. And they can control us. From not giving us a choice to say no to slavery to actually making us destroy that which we hold dear. They have that power._

_I say to you, how can we let that stand? Every moment a Pio has her wits about her is a victory. But those moments will be all too fleeting and entirely gone unless we act. We must act Now. We must not wait. We must cripple their ability to attack us, enslave us. For our children and our children’s children! Will you stand with me?_

~~Alona Tal, Assimian Plateau Refugee Camp 5024.10.07

"Hi," Jared said when the door opened. "I'm your new neighbor, Jared, Jared Padalecki," he offered extending his hand.

When his extended hand hung in mid-air long enough to become awkward, he looked up and took in the person standing in the open doorway.

The neighbor was slender, fairly tall (though a few inches shorter than Jared), with lithe muscles peeking out from the edges of thin, knit sleep shorts and shirt. He had dirty-blond hair and freckles, but his skin looked pale and washed out as if he hadn't seen the sun in far too long. Which, Jared considered as he leaned back and took in the cottage's dark windows with heavy, drawn shades, made sense. It looked like light rarely penetrated the interior. His neighbor's hair was tousled, and Jared began to suspect it was sleep-mussed, because the neighbor was blinking at him with a look of incomprehension.

Jared suddenly felt awkward and a bit embarrassed. He knew what time it was, just after 0730, which was late enough that his neighbors should be awake, but not so late that they would have left for work. He'd had good luck the past two days, having made contact with the two houses across the street--home to a couple of primary school teachers and a single woman who was a pilot for the NTCA space ministry, respectfully--and he'd just assumed the pattern would hold true. 

He was still holding out his hand, and his neighbor was still leaning against the door blinking. "I--I'm sorry, is this not a good time?" he asked.

The neighbor finally moved, as if spurred to action by a hidden switch. "I'm Je-- J, just J. And sorry to be so groggy, I work remotely, so uh, no commute, and I usually take the extra time to sleep late. Haven't had any coffee."

It was Jared's turn to stare blankly, as he struggled to place the reference.

"Sorry, caff," the neighbor, J, repeated. "Coffee is ancient slang, was popular where I grew up in the outer territories, but you don't care," J continued, mumbling to himself. He frowned, looked inside the dark interior for a moment, then turned back to Jared with a smile that looked real, but for some reason Jared couldn't quite place, Jared still suspected was forced. "Look, I've only got about 20 minutes before I have to get set up for work, but if you want, you can come in, join me for some caff," J offered.  
Jared accepted the invitation and followed his neighbor inside.

The interior of the small cottage was dim and sparsely furnished, there was no art on the walls, and what little furniture there was seemed to prioritize function over style. The main room housed a thinly upholstered couch, a desk with computer and comms terminal, and a low table. Charts and data tables lay neatly stacked on one corner of the desk. One wall was primarily devoted to a standard broadcast screen, which was currently displaying a newsfeed without sound. 

Off the main room he could see the vague outline of a quaint kitchen with basic appliances and a tiny table with two chairs. In the other direction was a short hall the led to two doors he assumed connected to the bedroom and washroom. The lighting panels were all dimmed and none of the windows seemed to let in light. The same heavy, fabric blinds hung in front of each one.

"You can have a seat, if you like," J offered returning from the kitchen with a steaming pitcher of caff and two mugs. "What brings you over here this morning?"

Where the other neighbors had been content to chit-chat about the community, the commute times to the capital city, and the weather, J seemed oddly nervous and expectant as if he believed Jared must be in search of more than a social call. 

Of course, Jared _was_ in search of a social call. He had ulterior motives, some dictated by his supervisors, others motivated by his own experience in investigating. He was trying to develop contacts, mine potential sources for intel, determine if any of his neighbors had information that might lead to the apprehension of Jensen Ackles, and search for substantiation of the tip the Agency had received regarding Ackles being in Ingsport.

His eyes, shadowed in the dim light, but Jared thought they might be some sort of green or hazel form his impression in the doorway, were quick, alert, searching, and wary. Jared got the sense J saw through him.

They chatted for a few minutes about work, Jared trotting out the "just trying to get to know the neighbors" excuse before the conversation turned to work and life in Ingsport. He learned J had lived in Ingsport for a year and a half, but had a migraine condition that led him to enjoy their pastoral surroundings less than he would like. Because of his environmental sensitivities, J had been given clearance for remote work. He was an academic of sorts, involved in research and analysis of infrastructure data for construction and security contingency planning, which Jared soon came to surmise included things like analyzing data to plan better tram routes, or ensuring faster and more secure evacuation plans for urban centers. Jared got the sense that the work involved a lot of reviewing of vidlogs and drone data, ridership records, and building designs, a lot of the same stuff Jensen reviewed for his work, but for a different purpose and with high level analysis of mountains and mountains of data instead of interrogations and witness interviews. Jared found it so easy to interact with J that despite the initial awkwardness, he was opening up and engaging. Before their conversation was done, he'd admitted he was a special agent with the Agency and involved in one of the counterterrorism taskforces, which was more than he'd told to any of the other neighbors. He wasn't undercover, after all, and was trying to cultivate resources, contacts, spies. J seemed to be exactly the type of resource he needed. Even as home-centric as Jensen was, his conversational style hinted at far-ranging knowledge and diverse hobbies that kept him almost _mind-linked_ to current events.

Before he realized it, J was checking the chron on the broadcast screen and rising. "I am so sorry to have to cut this short, but I have two minutes until I have to log in. Welcome to the neighborhood, Agent Padalecki, I hope you like it."

As he made his way to the door, Jared realized for all their conversation he didn't have more than his neighbor's first name, or maybe initial, J. "What's your name again?" he asked.

This time there was no hesitation. "J, J Assor," J said offering his hand.

Jared grasped J's hand and shook it. "Pleased to meet you."

~~~

Jensen smiled as the door closed. It had been so long--years really--since he'd had a conversation like that with anyone. No espionage, no coded speech, no expectations that he would do his duty and agree to whatever task or trick Jeff thought would be the best use of his brain. Between his eidetic memory, his control over the cerebral architecture, and the knowledge and training in history, math, science, and programming he'd acquired over the years, Jensen seemed to be the PLF's "solution" to far too many problems.

The last time he'd just _talked_ to someone about shared interests and experiences was years ago, right after he'd mastered locking out the implants and before he got pulled into active work for the resistance. He'd been reading everything he could find, testing his control by opening up the flow enough to download new knowledge while keeping the Central Authority's programmers out, learning by leaps and bounds. Felicia had been his first friend post-chipping, and after Jensen, the next most talented rescued Pio when it came to resisting and using the architecture and absorbing new skills. They'd talked, and teased, and taught each other, learning each other's areas of expertise. It was like childhood again, before he'd known he was a Pio.

He let the feeling wash over him and sighed, pushing away the fear and certainty that came on its heels.

Jared was after him, and somehow the Agency had learned enough to send an agent or agents to Ingsport to look for him. And the only way the Agency would know that was of they'd either broken the PLF (which would have already been news and would have resulted in Jensen's immediate capture, not a semi-clandestine hunt for Jensen possibly being there), or Jeff had broken Felicia and tipped them off. Jensen was a liability. And Jared was an unwitting pawn.

With a sigh, he sat down and logged in. Was it luck or planning that had sent Jared to the house next door? He didn't think he was already caught, and he couldn't suppress the spark of excitement at the prospect of seeing Jensen again. He should leave, move, slip out in the night. But to do so now would invite instant scrutiny. He might as well paint a target on his back and tattoo his name across his forehead. 

But how long would it take before Jared realized his neighbor was his quarry?

~~~

Jensen continued performing his work-from-home data analysis, but each day after the first day, which was three days after the second anniversary of the worse day of Jensen’s life, Jared pulled Jensen farther and farther out of his shell. Jensen tried to stick to his defenses—he was shy and not really great with people, and his job was actually mentally very demanding and sometimes required work outside normal business hours.

But the instant, undeniable chemistry he had with Jared continued to grow. 

It started with coffee, or _caff_ the official New Terran word for the caffeinated beverage that Jensen hadn’t even learned until he was a couple of years into his time as a slave. His mom had always used the old Earth term, and his dad had never corrected her. Then again, plenty of people in Bauxellena, the tiny outer province that made up the eastern point of Ostara Continent, used old Earth terms. Jensen didn’t know if that meant most of the people there were actually Pios or Pio-friendly, or if it just meant it was a small, isolated community with deep ties to its past. He’d probably never know. Travel had been difficult even since being “freed” by the PLF, and he’d only left the Prime Continent twice in the past 20 years and never to go to Ostara.

But every day, after the first, Jared showed up at 0730 and they shared coffee. Coffee led to conversation—about Jared’s investigations, Jensen’s work, the neighborhood, the culture of Ingsport and how different it was from the cities where Jared had lived… And each morning, Jared left just before 8, giving Jensen time to login to work and go about his day. Their easy camaraderie made it difficult for Jensen both to get Jared to believe his reasons for being so hidden away, and to remember to try to hold Jared at arm’s length.

But as the days turned into weeks their encounters expanded from coffee to chance encounters—at the local convenience shop (one of the few public places Jansen ventured), on the walking path around the closest pond, when Jared was mowing his lawn (and cursing loudly because he hadn’t the faintest idea how a hovermower worked, let alone how to start one). They started interacting more and more, chance giving way to intent, evening chats across the yard, afternoon tea… Their conversations turned to the more substantive. Jensen found himself opening up about his childhood, growing up in the provinces, moving around as an adult, adjusting to new environments. It was risky, or it should have been, but never once did Jared show a hint of recognition. Perhaps the details of Jensen’s true childhood—the life he’d known before his world had become a war—were to those who hunted him. Was he grateful that there was no record of his mother’s family, her parenting style, her beliefs and the values she instilled in her son? Or was he sad because that meant there was likely no one else in the universe who remembered his mother, his family? (His father might still technically live, but whatever the current deal was, the Deputy Minister in no way represented the kind and forgiving man he’d known as a child.)

They fell into a friendly rhythm of sharing tips about the area and discussing the data analysis of Jensen’s work, as much as they could with it being largely confidential.

Jared kept pressing Jensen, or J, as he knew him, take the tram into Terropoli to tour the city, but Jensen couldn’t risk it. All it would take would be one security camera with proper facial recognition on and he’d be dead within five seconds. Luckily it was sweeping into summer with bright sun and great heat at their latitude, so Jared accepted Jensen’s excuse about migraines without much protest.

Try as he might to not get sucked in, Jensen couldn’t help but notice their feelings.

Jared seemed fascinated by history. Whether it was the history of the cosmos, early Earth space exploration, the development of human rights on New Terra, the history of the Pios and Pio-Wars… To Jensen it was surprising what Jared didn’t know, but all of it seemed so relevant to Jared’s investigation, that Jared was eager to absorb the information, enrich himself with Jensen’s knowledge. Even if every word out of Jensen’s mouth might be leading Jared closer and closer to catching him, he found it difficult to care.

“How do you know so much about so many different topics?” Jared asked one day. 

Jensen bit his lip in consideration and settled for an answer that was mostly the truth. “My family moved from the Provinces to the Prime Continent when I was 15—government work, my dad’s assignment changed. It was a big adjustment, the culture was so different, and the first few years, I had to move around a lot. I got sick—that’s when my migraines started—the light at these latitudes just doesn’t work well for my brain. So, between being sick and moving, I got behind on school. When we finally settled down long enough and I started to get the migraines under control, I was so thrilled I could study again, I just started reading and never stopped.”

Jared accepted the answer with a nod and didn’t press further. To Jensen’s pleasant surprise, it appeared Jared’s suspicion was not piqued by the new revelation.

As the weeks went on, it didn’t take long for Jensen to revise his assessment of Jared. Spending time with Jared, dangerous as it was, was the most fun, the most alive he’d felt _ever_. The more time they spent together, the more even Felicia paled in comparison. Jared was smart, funny, sincere, and earnest. He was also kind and, despite his job being finding and ending Jensen, Jensen found Jared’s motivations for joining the Agency and pursuing counterterrorism to be pure. Jared just wanted to restore peace, keep more innocents from dying senseless deaths.

Considering that Jensen had tried to ensure Minkata wouldn’t happen, breaking orders and smuggling himself halfway down the continent in an attempt to stop the attack… he could respect Jared’s point of view.

Three months after they met, Jared invited Jensen over for dinner. Jared’s house was bright airy, and light, such a contrast from Jensen’s tiny, dim cottage, and Jensen felt comfortable there, despite the ever-present locked door just off the main hall that he knew had to lead to Jared’s secure office, one of the places he went to hunt for Jensen.

~~~

That night after dinner, Jared asked J to stay. “I know you’re, well shy, and I’ve got a complicated life and a lot of baggage, but I—I look forward to every morning, every afternoon, every conversation with you. And I can try to tell my bosses you’re an invaluable community resource with lots of historical knowledge and tips, but when it comes down to it, I like you. And every moment I spend with you—” Jared broke off and flushed. “I don’t do this often, well actually I’ve done this, talking about how I feel, exactly never. He looked up into J’s eyes. “Every moment I spend with you, I feel more. You’re important to me. I can’t imagine what my life would be like if they ever reassign me, even though I _want_ to achieve my goal, I don’t want my life to go back to the way it was before you were in it. I’m falling for you. I love who you are, and I may have already fallen.”

J’s eyes teared as Jared spoke, and for a long, long moment, he was silent, unmoving in a way Jared hadn’t seen since that first morning. 

“I’ve been trying to tell myself your job is too dangerous, that you don’t have room in your life for me,” J admitted. “But I’ve never felt this way about anyone.” He reached out and put his hand on Jared’s shoulder, hesitant, asking.

Jared returned the gesture, sliding his left hand around J’s back and pulling him in. He leaned closer, then closer still, approaching J as if he was a skittish ponet that might bolt at any moment. When there was no more room or air between them, they kissed. J’s lips parting for the intrusion of Jared’s tongue felt much like a virgin opening up for the first time. But J’s technique was confident, passionate, even if he did like Jared take the lead.

Without spoken words, Jared led J from the dining room, down the long hall past his office to his bedroom. He hadn’t believed he would be taking this step with J so soon, when he invited J over for dinner or even when he initiated the kiss. But now that they had kissed, Jared found himself needing to be inside J, to learn his body as he was learning his mind. As they reached the bed, Jared began to undress J, hands under his clothes, fingers roaming, hands mirroring Jared’s own, a little more cautious, but still enthusiastic, sure.

Jared had gotten J’s shirt unbuttoned and completely removed when his hand brushed against something on Jensen’s neck, maybe a faint line, maybe nothing. Jared wouldn’t have even noticed, it but Jensen pulled away so suddenly, Jared thought he had hurt him.

“I’m sorry, am I going too fast?” he asked, flushing with embarrassment, even as his body surged with the need to consummate their relationship.

J shook his head, wordless, as if collecting his thoughts. When he spoke, his voice was breathless. “No, I want this, you, I _need_ you, now. Don’t want to wait. It’s just... I hurt my neck as a kid, sometimes touching it the wrong way makes it lock up. It’s okay now.” J smiled and resumed the kiss.

His need overcoming his curiosity, Jared resumed his quest to see Jensen naked, and soon they were twined together under the soft sheets of Jared’s bed, J’s body open and pliant beneath him, welcoming Jared inside.

Later that night, much later, after they were both exhausted and spent and Jared was confident he knew every millimeter of J’s body, Jared found himself wondering about the strange line on the back of J’s neck. He didn’t want to press, but the investigator in him knew it was significant or at least thought it felt _familiar_ like he should have realized what it meant, what would have caused it, but try as he might he just couldn’t put the pieces together. 

After the first kiss and the first night together, Jared slept with and beside J more often than not. Usually they stayed in J’s tiny cottage, which had a surprisingly spacious bed, in deference to J’s light sensitivity and need to work from home sometimes with tasks at odd hours.

Jared never noticed the line on J’s neck again, and almost dismissed it from his mind, but he couldn’t quite forget. He also noticed that while J always slept soundly and was still sleeping when Jared awoke, J took a long time falling asleep. Even after thoroughly exhausting sex, J would compose himself and _meditate_ while lying in bed. Try as he might, Jared never once fell asleep before J.


	4. Part III

_The tales of Pioneers date back to the origins of humanity on earth. Once upon a time, when the world was new and its inhabitants existed as scattered people, each aware of only their own little corner of the planet, there were those who set out across the seas and plains in search of all things new. They traveled in caravans or wagon trains, taking their possessions and family with them, trying to build new lives when they found a good place to stop._

_Over the centuries, pioneers on sea and land gave way to pioneers in the air, and eventually in space._

_Many of the details are lost to time. The story of the Pioneers or “Pios” as we know them now, begins back on Earth, long before New Terra or Shadowfall, or the Scattered Colonies. Long before humans learned or forgot or reimagined how to fold spacetime to their will._

_The planet was overcrowded, dying. It was too hot and the oceans were too dead and there was too much trash, too little protein. The medicines were all failing, and for the first time in centuries parents would live longer than their children. And unlike the Dark Ages, there was little chance humanity would bounce back._

_Someone or someones crafted what had to be a plan of complete insanity. Colonists, not just scientists or military, but ordinary people from all walks of life, every profession and personality type you might need to start a society, to build a world from the ground up, set off in giant time capsules of space ships. The giant metal tubes with fusion engines that were projected to last a millennium before running out of fuel and which succeeded in shooting their passengers along at relativistic speeds, took off from Earth, each ship bearing a passenger manifest of colonists and crew of 20,000 people. There were ten ships, and they were flung to the far winds, pointed in the direction of any earthlike planet in the “goldilocks zone” (that is a different fairytale for a different time) or even any planet that might work as a new colony a habitable world._

_These life rafts of humanity were the new Pioneers. Destined to live for generations in their metal tubes as they hurtled along at 95% the speed of light, never reaching it, experiencing time in a bubble while it rushed by at breakneck pace for the universe outside. The odds were no one would ever know what happened to the others, what happened to earth. The colonies, if they ever reached the far-off planets, and if those planets were capable of hosting human life, and a lot of other “ifs” people frequently tend to ignore, would be unlikely to ever be in contact with one another. For all we knew there could be ten different worlds with ten different versions of us running around._

_Only fate stepped in to intervene. When an eleventh trip was planned, things happened very fast. The Earth destabilized and weather was erratic at best. The scientists looked for ways and technologies. They tried to fix the planet, they tried to get us all off it. Some even proposed thinning the herd. Perhaps if enough of humanity was gone, one way or another, there would be more time. Horrific as the ideas might seem, there was not an original thought among the bunch. Until… well, until someone figured out how to fold spacetime the first time._

_The eleventh mission was scrapped. And within a generation there had been a max exodus from earth, not just of humans, but of all the species we could find. Within a handful of generations these emigrants had settled and resettled from planet to planet and moon to moon, until finally some arrived at a promising world, rather a lot like Earth, but a little different. Of course, after all this time, the people had learned a thing or two about how to bend and shape more than time and space, but the world around them without causing it to break. They were confident they could settle down, begin anew, and invite the humans from the other human worlds and colonies to come too. Build one big human world together._

_Now you all know that story. That planet was New Terra. In the years that followed, humanity pulled back mostly to New Terra, or at least what we know of humanity did. For a while there, the skill of spacefolding was almost lost from disuse. People realized the error in that, and soon it was recovered. And New Terra was a beautiful and peaceful world, continuing on much the way Earth had, only with less strife, two thousand years before._

_But then, _they_ showed up._

_At first, the newest visitors to New Terra were believed to be aliens. But no one else had encountered sentient life in all their travels, so many were skeptical._

_At some point, the story came out that the new people, who looked far too human, when they took of their protective gear and exited their strange ships on the surface, were those original space Pioneers. Our records do not reflect if they were from one particular colony ship, or if perhaps at some other time the colonies had reunited. We just know there were more of them where they came from, and while they seemed alien, then human, the truth was far stranger. According to at least one Pioneer and at least one human scientist who got curious, the Pioneers had survived and gained spectacular territory due to the intervention or possible interbreeding of another species of _real_ aliens._

_Some say the alien blood made the Pioneers sterile, others said it made them truly a separate species, unable to interbreed with humans._

_Of course, anyone who pays attention to what happened knows both of those ideas must be wrong._

_Other said the alien blood gave them unnaturally long life. Others said the aliens were not Pioneers at all, but a shapeshifting race that had stolen the shape and form of the humans they encountered and destroyed, and now they planned the same here, on New Terra._

_They were telepaths._

_They were telekinetic._

_They were allergic to everything. Or maybe we were allergic to them._

_The stories for the reasons between the mistrust between humanity and Pios are varied. Perhaps none, or all, of them bear a grain of truth. It may be as simple as the Pios are different. Whether through alien DNA or just because they roamed different stars for a few thousand years between leaving earth and finding New Terra, they were different, and they could interbred with humans. But they didn’t have our shared identity, our heritage, or our experience. So, we distrusted them, and ultimately, after some sort of skirmish in which humans and Pios alike wound up dead, cast them out._

_But this was just the first of several wars. There were more Pios where these came from. Though we do not know where they were originally, as of the last Pioneer War the Pios had taken over more than half of the scattered colonies, although most of those were taken due to abandonment..._

~~ _History of Pios and the Pio Wars_  
Ekatarina Smythe, University of Minkata

Part 3

If Jensen had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, as his mother would have said, which he was, but not as earnestly as he once would have, he certainly would have believed something bad was coming the night his carefully planned lucid dreaming turned not to dreams but to _memories_.

It happened sometimes. Thanks to the cerebral architecture forcibly “installed” in the brain of every identified person with Pio ancestry on New Terra (every one that wasn’t exiled to a one-way ship into deep space or executed outright), memory was an interesting and, unfortunately malleable concept. Sometimes memories got stuck in the synthetic hardware rather than encoded in the brain, and when triggered—perhaps by a stray comment, a planned subject of a lucid dream, they could download and _play_ like an old-Earth “movie,” enabling (or at times forcing) the individual to relive the past.

When a faulted memory triggered while sleeping, it had a tendency to hijack the planned dream, which was exactly what happened to Jensen.

~~~

“Jensen,” a deep voice called after him as he exited the warehouse basement they used as a meeting room. It was Jeff’s voice.

Jensen cringed feeling his stomach do an uncomfortable flip-flop. When the leader of the Pio resistance called you out _after_ a meeting that had discussed goals, objectives, and operational plans, it couldn’t be good. 

Part of Jensen thought it was _never_ good. The PLF was supposed to give Pios, everyone branded by the government for having less-than-human blood (the New Terran government’s terms, not his) hope. Even those like Jensen who had been caught and _modified_ the PLF was supposed to be their way out, their way to fight back, regain some semblance of control over their lives. But lately, it seemed the toll was just too high. Rather than gaining freedom, Jensen felt more and more like he was signing away what little semblance of control, self-determination, a life he still had.

Maybe it had always been that way. It had been over 20 years since he’d been caught and “chipped” by the New Terran Central Authority. More than two decades since his family had been torn apart, his mother executed, Jensen turned into a mental slave to make an example of his father, supposedly to teach a lesson to all humans who would sympathize with (or worse, intermarry with) anyone of Pio or even suspect blood. Fifteen years since the Samanthas had found him working in a minor government official’s household, straining against the mental programming, trying to educate himself despite the risks. They’d taught him how to block the impulses, resist the compulsions and programming the NTCA transmitted to his brain. First it was little respites, five, ten minutes at a time where he was himself and he could do as he pleased. Then it was longer, whole hours, then days, and then anytime he was awake. Jensen was skilled, a natural, they said. Capable of regaining himself despite the hardware implanted in his brain intended to bend his will to that of his controllers. Soon he could resist while still detecting the compulsion, allowing him to conceal his freedom, make others think he was still obeying his programming. Then fifteen years ago, the Samanthas had introduced him to Jeff who told Jensen there was more out there for Pios, an organization just for them, secret, to win their freedom, make their point so the people of New Terra would learn, understand what really happened, how children were rounded up and turned into mindless minions. How their crimes consisted of nothing more than daring to exist.

It had sounded like a good deal. He’d signed himself up before Jeff could finish giving him the sales pitch. After all, if Jensen had regained the freedom of his own mind after so many years, why wouldn’t he choose to fight for freedom for all Pios, everyone like him.

Of course, he hadn’t understood then how slavery, coercion could take other forms. They didn’t have to be in your mind to control it. And, well, the PLF wasn’t above hijacking someone’s architecture, their mind, to get what they wanted. 

It seemed to Jensen the PLF had been getting more reckless, desperate, Unfettered in its operations. Whether the reason was because they were getting closer and closer to a goal, or the NCTA’s actions against Pios were getting worse, or there was some other factor driving their relentless thrusts forward, Jensen didn’t know. Maybe the PLF had always been that way, and it was just his perception that had changed. As Jensen’s connection to the PLF drew him closer and closer to the heart of their operations, maybe he was just learning the unsavory truth that had always been there.

The PLF could be as cruel and heartless towards Pios as any human ever aspired to be. Most Pios had the architecture imbedded in their brains that allowed them to be, for all intents and purposes, programmed or remote controlled. While every Pio engaged in the PLF trained and fought and strove to overcome the impulses, fight off the iron grip of external control, no one was perfect. No one could resist 100% of the time. It was harder to resist when you were tired, sick, distracted, distressed, or just run down. And even if you were damn near perfect, well everyone had to sleep sometime.

“Jensen!” Jeff’s voice called again, this time more urgent, commanding.

Jensen half believed he felt a tug at the circuits in his brain. He doubted Jeff would be so blatant now, in the presence of so many other PLF spies, but Jensen couldn’t tell for sure. The more time he spent in the inner circle, the more he came to associate Jeff with loss of control. The reaction was probably psychosomatic. Knowing that didn’t make Jensen’s stomach churn any less.

“Yes,” he said, turning to face Jeff. He resisted the impulse to tack the word “sir,” onto his response. He was done with those days. Never again.

Jeff didn’t speak, but caught Jensen’s eye and cocked his head towards the room they had just left.

Reluctant, Jensen descended the few steps he’d managed to climb and walked back down the hall towards the doorway.

Jeff didn’t stop when he got inside, instead he crossed to the far side and entered what appeared to be a utility closet, but Jensen knew actually housed the sensitive and highly illegal comm and architecture signal jamming tech the PLF only dared use for the most sensitive of operations.

When he got inside and closed the door, he blinked in the harsh light. With pristine, pearlescent white walls and the reflective surface of metallic machinery, the seccom room was painfully bright compared to the dim light of the basement beyond. It was also much, much larger than a utility closet, taking up one entire side of the building, paralleling the basement proper, filled with partition after partition between various comm and computer terminals, with a small open area in the center where several people could gather at a time.

Which was apparently what they were doing now. Jeff gave a dismissive nod to one of the PLF members staffing the nearest terminal. The woman stood, and signaled everyone else in the room, about a half-dozen PLF analysts disguised in the drab, gray woolene suits of common office workers, to follow her out a second door at the far end of the room. As the workers left, two people Jensen did know, the younger Samantha and Felicia, one of his few friends and a Pio he’d helped to recruit about 12 years ago, approached.

Felicia could be wild and enthusiastic in her dedication to fighting back against the oppressive regime that had controlled her brain and forced her to work in an architecture factory for twelve years. She’d hated being complicit—against her will—in subjugating others like them, and was eager to help exact her revenge on the government that had proclaimed all Pios, anyone with even a single DNA marker of alien-modified blood, should be eradicated like an infectious disease. Felicia, however, was more restrained than Jeff or many of his lieutenants, as she, like Jensen, tended to view humans as fellow sentient beings, brothers and sisters, not cannon fodder. She questioned some of Jeff’s more extreme ideas, and like Jensen was one of the few PLF operatives who could instinctively control the architecture, filtering and blocking foreign impulses with near-perfect control.

She also knew things about the factories, the architecture, and the government’s “selection process,” that she had not shared with Jeff. Jensen had a feeling there was even more, details he could sense lurking just out of reach when they linked minds, that she had never shared with anyone. 

He wasn’t sure whether it was a good or bad sign that Felicia had also been called to this meeting.

When the room was clear but for the four of them, Jeff closed and locked the doors with a mental command.

The knot in Jensen’s stomach twisted tighter as the top-level signal blocking machinery whirred to life and the lights above the exits cycled from green to red.

“Jensen, we have an opportunity and a plan to strike at the heart of the New Terran consciousness, to really send a message. And because of your unique connections to the NCTA…” Jeff trailed off.

Jensen flinched at the reference to his father, who after having turned Jensen over to the authorities had resumed his post in NCTA security, with an apparent promotion, as his duty location was moved from the far-flung provinces where Jensen had lived as a child to Minkata, the most populous city on New Terra. 

“Well, with your connections and your unique… skills, we feel you are the best operative for the job. The _only_ operative, you might say.”

“Who’s we?” Jensen asked, his voice gruff.

“Well Samantha and myself, and Miss Felicia, as we have had to consult with her technical expertise. Given the very sensitive nature of this mission, I felt it best that we keep the circle of trust small and focused. Operational security will be our top priority. Even Samantha F.’s control over her architecture is not pristine enough to risk including her on this one,” Jeff answered. He appeared solemn, but Jensen couldn’t help thinking Jeff sounded a bit smug. Like it was all a game, and he was the master puppeteer pulling everyone’s strings.

So much for being the leader of the resistance intended to cut everyone’s strings and bring freedom.

“So, the rest of the Council doesn’t know,” Jensen confirmed.

Jeff just nodded. —

“What is it you want me to do?”

~~~

The next morning, Jensen woke panting and sweating without any good excuse for why his usually peaceful sleep had been interrupted.

But Jared seemed more concerned with confirming Jensen was okay and not sick or unduly distressed, than interrogating him about the change in his sleep patterns. Jared even used the extra time afforded by Jensen’s early awakening to claim him and fuck him into the mattress. Jensen felt so _relieved_ by the time he had to start his work day, he almost forgot about the memory glitch and the general feeling of doom.

~~~

The knock on the door came late in the afternoon and broke Jensen from his deep concentration. He wondered absently if it was Jared home early stopping by for tea, and secured his workstation without another thought.

But when he opened the door, smile on his face, the person waiting for him, was not Jared.

“Felicia,” he said, smile falling, voice grim. “What the fuck are you doing here.”

“Can I come in, Jenny,” she glanced furtively over her shoulder. “It’s not good for me to be out in public in any one place for too long.”

Jensen opened the door wider and stood aside with a displeased grunt. “How the fuck did you even find me?” he asked, his speech patterns reverting to the old gruff, weary, bitten anger he’d projected in the difficult months between Jeff’s reveal of the Minkata project and his ultimate decision to leave the PLF rather than be party to mass murder. When Felicia was inside, he closed and locked the door, and snapped, “and don’t you mean you don’t want to draw attention to me? Your face at my door, all it would take would be one drone, one camera, one CAPS riding by on an errand and I would be dead.”

“Nice to see you too, Jenny,” Felicia countered. “Are we secure?”

“You do know my next-door neighbor is a fed, with the Agency,” he added.

“And you’re fucking him, or rather you’re letting him fuck you even though he’s hunting you. It’s quite sordid and really not the point here. I’m in trouble. Need your help. You’re the only person I could turn to,” Felicia said, cutting off Jensen’s protests, and leveling a glare at him, hands on her hips, tone commanding.

“I wouldn’t call what we do _fucking_ ,” Jensen countered.

“Look I’m happy you found true love in the most ill-matched and ill-suited scenario imaginable, but we don’t have much time.”

Already weary, and missing the Felicia he used to know, before that damn assignment, before the entire world turned on its ear and scrambled his brain and his life, he gestured towards the couch indicating she should sit.

“I’m starving, been on the run for two weeks, haven’t eaten in three days, can you spare something?” Felicia interjected, her hands visibly shaking, every ounce of bravado vanished and replaced with exhaustion and fear.

“Sure,” Jensen said, feeling guilty despite himself.

Later when the dishes were cleaned and Jensen’s daily analysis was turned in to his supervisors, he confronted Felicia. Why would she show up here, _now_? She had said she was on the run. She said it was dangerous, but surely she must understand what she was doing by coming here. Every moment she stayed was another moment Jensen would be exposed, and being this close to Jensen (and Jared) exposed her, put her at greater risk.

He’d been wondering what had changed in Felicia for years now. Since the Minkata Plan first got brought up and Jeff gave her that that look. As if Felicia would support _Jeff_ no matter what, over Jensen, her best friend. When Jeff had talked about blinking the biggest office building on the planet out of existence and he knew this was the only way forward for the Pio people, and wouldn’t Jensen please help, and _Felicia agreed_ , Jensen had known something was wrong. He just hadn’t believed it. Now, he _believed_ it, but he still didn’t know what was wrong, or how it went wrong.

“It’s not just—” Felicia started then broke off. For another few moments, she didn’t speak. She didn’t make eye contact or even look at Jensen, either. Her gaze remained fixed on the low table, now empty save for a glass of water. “I don’t want you to think badly of me for what PLF did. I— every day I ask myself why I didn’t see it sooner, why I didn’t question. Why I agreed Minkata was necessary. I could blame my training or my upbringing...” she trailed off, shrugged again. “Maybe it’s all those things, maybe there’s no excuse, maybe I–” 

She met his eyes, and Jensen knew what went unsaid. _Maybe my mind wasn’t my own. Maybe my memories changed. Maybe they were controlling me.Jeff_ was wrong… I knew… I just— Just know that when I realized what was really happening, I couldn’t be party to that any longer. I did everything I could to help you. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them from using you.”

“Using me,” Jensen gave a bitter chuckle. “Is that what they’re calling it.”

“Jensen, you had a duty, and you tried to abandon it!” Felicia raised her voice, the calm broken.

“Did I? How do you know?” Jensen demanded. “I know I _tried_ to leave so they couldn’t go forward with a plan to murder millions of people and destroy half a city. I _did_ leave, but you see, I fell asleep and it happened anyway, only worse than we had planned. Did I really run away? Or did I agree to stay, and make myself think I ran away? Or did I run and they hacked me while I slept? I don’t know Felicia. I can’t ever know because you knew I kept notebooks and I didn’t write an entry on the Ides because I was so fucking tired. So, you tell me, did I run?”

“I stayed. I fought,” Felicia countered. “I knew running wouldn’t stop the plan. I was trying to get PLF back on track, to the organization that freed us. We owe them our lives—”

“Funny, three years ago you never would have said that. You said we were our own people. They just gave us back what was always ours and we should help them, so we could help others like us. You never would have said we owed the PLF, or that we owed Jeff anything! What did he _do_ to you, Felicia?”

“I saw what happened to people when they thought you’d left. And I’m not talking about the physical cleanup from Minkata.” She spat, actually cleared her throat and _spat_ out the name of the biggest, most revered terrorist massacre in history as if everyone it bothered was some disgusting, defective monster.

“I _did_ leave,” Jensen gritted out, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and wishing Felicia would turn out just to be another nightmare 

“I don’t know, Jensen. I don’t know if anyone knows. But they all believe you’re guilty. You’re the PLF’s hero and the NTCA’s most wanted. Jeff just thinks you’re an ungrateful child who couldn’t see the big picture,” Felicia replied some of the heat leaching out of her voice.

“But they’re accusing me of killing kids, _kids_ , Felicia, and the truth is, I don’t know—I can’t know—if I did it. So, whether or not it’s true, I have to live with the possibility. I have to listen to my name, to hear people think of me like I’m a monster. I have to consider that possibility.” Jensen sighed, deflating against the edge of his desk. “You know, in all the years I was living in the outskirts of Unity Park sleeping in old subtram tunnels and doing odd jobs for food, listening to the mantra we were told—Pios are evil, Pios almost destroyed humans, one drop of Pio blood and we’re all doomed—I never felt dirty, never felt ashamed. They were _wrong_ about us, I knew that. But now…” he shook his head, “now I don’t know. I want to blame Jeff, but I don’t even know whose call it was, if it was my own. I just know for the first time in my life, I _am_ dirty, tainted, and nothing I ever say or do can possibly make up for it.” 

“Jeff is the world’s greatest strategist.”

Jensen had heard the story a million times. After what he suspected Jeff had done to him, he didn’t much care. 

He can see all the ties and factions and fault lines and connections laid out around him. He _knew_ we had to take out Minkata or the people would forget us.”

“Yeah, well now they fucking hate us, Felicia. How the hell is Jeff going to remedy that?” Jensen asked, flopping down into his least favorite living room chair. He’s slipping. This behavior wasn’t right for the way he’d been presenting his personality. It was _Jensen_ , his old personality, his former bearing and demeanor, however true that was, not J, the calm, quiet, dutiful intellectual, worker, and boyfriend that Jared loved. 

It was what Felicia and her zealotry brought out in him, but it could, would, raise Jared’s suspicion. Not to mention, it tended to cause conflicts with… everybody. His former self, pre-Minkata, hadn’t exactly been the easiest person in the universe to get along with, so worn down and bitter he had been.

“You know some people say Jeff doesn’t have alien DNA, he doesn’t have cybernetic implants, he just cares about us, sees us as equal, and has the natural, human skills to help us win back our rightful place.” Felicia continued.

“You don’t actually believe that.” Jensen certainly didn’t. And even if it was true, Jeff, friend or not, was still willing to offer Jensen in sacrifice to New Terra’s wolves. If Jeff was just a human ally, well Jensen tended to think his behavior suggested Jeff was really working _for_ the New Terran government, not the Pios.

“You know, your father was human, Jensen.”

He didn’t need to be reminded. Losing his father, getting the implant, and being taken from his life as a 15-year-old had been the most painful thing he’d ever known. He’d seen his mother once after that, not long after he’d emerged from his own memoryless “orientation” lockdown, before he understood just how deep the cybernetics went and how much control they gave away. She was a walking, breathing vegetable. She could clean and care for herself—because he owners had programmed her to—but they had turned off all her mental faculties and higher brain functions, making her the perfect slave. His father had done nothing. Worse, his father had _wanted_ it as the lesser evil. The alternative had been execution for Jensen’s mother and extraplanetary exile for Jensen. Jensen’s human father had chosen condemning his wife to a living death, his son to a life of slavery and self-doubt, because was the _good_ option, the humane thing to do... Jensen’s mother’s alien blood had been too much for his father to forgive, even though he had seduced his wife (if you could call it that) while she was a prisoner under his command. He’d tried with Jensen, to give him a life, but at some point, it wasn’t possible. Jensen had resigned himself to a life of slavery, until the PLF had shown up in his owners’ house and gave him options, taught him to be free.

Jensen couldn’t help but wonder if he’d have been better off (and 5 million other people) had he just ignored the cause. He couldn’t help but wonder if they all would have been better off if he’d died in space.

“We can debate the merits of the PLF’s choices of targets in the last few years until we’re both blue in the face. But you came here for a reason, what do you want? Jared will be home soon,” he added.

“I didn’t count you making things so much worse. By running, you gave them all they needed to use you, threaten you, or do this, ensure you take the blame. When someone gets punished, it’s you, and you could have avoided it.”

Jensen cocked an eyebrow.

“Before you ran, I was prepared to put you on house arrest until you agreed with us on the course of action,” she explained.

Jensen hissed, his current rage against the PLF kicking up about 1000 percent. “I remember you _helping_ me leave,” he admitted.

“Well, my memory’s different. I stayed for as long as I could try to keep it from getting worse, keep the fighting from getting lethal. But they saw me as an extension of you. A friend, too close, one who couldn’t be trusted. Jeff froze me out, and someone leaked to the Central Authority that I have training in cerebral architecture implantation and mental mapping. The target on my back isn’t as big as yours, but the PLF won’t even acknowledge my existence, and I’m being hunted. I don’t know what I remember is real and what isn’t, but I know you were my closest friend in the universe and the only other person who understands the way I do how our brains work.”

“So, you’re running, you’re angry, and your memory’s full of holes and contradictions,” Jensen said, letting out a sigh to disperse some of the anger that had pent up inside him.

“Basically, yeah,” she agreed.

“What can I do?”

“I need your relationship with Jared. I need you to convince Jared to get me a clear path out of Ingsport and into Terrapoli. There’s a hardcopy archive and an isolated digital database of all command authorizations for the official CAPS hardware system. It’s a longshot, but if there is evidence Jeff or anyone else is playing both sides, it would show up there.”

“But how could you trust it?” Jensen asked.

“Faith. At some point, you have to just pick the truth that seems most right and believe. You can’t guarantee it’s correct, but you can get as close as possible to certain, and that has to be good enough. Jensen,” she squeezed his hand. “I know they did something to me. I know I used to not be like this, angry, bitter, singing Jeff’s praises one minute and agreeing with you the next. I need to know what they did, because with all my knowledge of the architecture, all our training, I can’t figure out how they did it. And if they can keep controlling us, when we think we’re free—”

_We’ll always be their slaves._

Jensen squeezed her hand, surprised at the telepathic touch. It was a skill most Pios had to some degree and it was made far easier by the architecture, but the PLF had conditioned them not to use the skill because of the risk of exposure by highlighting Pios' “abnormalities” compared to humans. “I’ll get Jared to help.”


	5. Part IV

_Count yourself lucky if you’ve never had to face your conscience and choose between doing what your government says is right and doing what you know to be human._

_I don’t care if the Pios are a bunch of alien-hybrid telepaths who developed singularity bombs and have proved they can use them to wipe out our cities. Just because they _can_ cause destruction and engender fear doesn’t mean they are inherently evil or undeserving of our compassion._

_The old punishment for discovery of an illegal Pio child on New Terra was a one-way exile to deep space. The took the kid, put them on a single-use shuttle with a little bit of food and water and shot them up to relativistic speeds, launched in the direction of the last known Pio colonies. We don’t know if anyone still lives in those colonies. And there certainly wasn’t enough food or water for the children to survive the journey, but we did it and our government sanctioned it, because it was seen as giving the children a chance._

_That we would engage in this behavior because our government told us to fear children is disgusting, immoral, and wrong._

_Now we have other tools at our disposal including computer implants that bend Pios’ brains to the government’s will. You’ve seen the CAPS working in our cities, who do you think they are? Pios, or maybe humans who helped Pios._

_This practice is disgusting and deplorable, and it has to stop. But it will never stop as long as we are complacent, complicit._

~ Rev. Misha Collins, New Morningside Parish, 5118.03.17

Part IV

After enduring another round of teasing from Sheppard regarding his “genius boyfriend,” and all the ideas Jared got from his talks with J, Jared returned home to find an unexpected situation.

“She’s my old friend, from college. Remember when I said I was sick for a long time, and finally got to go back to school? Well, Lisha here was my classmate and we were best friends for a long time,” J explained as Jared took in the unexpected guest sitting on J’s living room couch.

“Lisha” waved at Jared, who stared at her and waved back. There was something strangely familiar about him that made his memory “itch,” as if recognition was just out of reach.

“You’ve never mentioned her before,” Jared responded, which was a surprise, since J seemed to talk about everything.

“I haven’t seen her since before she moved here and she showed up unannounced.” J’s arms were crossed over his chest and his body language was nervous and withdrawn. Not quite, skittish like he’d been the first time Jared met him, but _defensive_. The only thing was, Jared couldn’t tell if it was Lisha or _him_ that was prompting the strange response.

“Is she staying?” Jared asked, hoping he didn’t sound too eager at the prospect that she might be leaving. He was exhausted. The latest leads and ideas had turned up dry again, except they had two new names of Ackles’ old associates to run through various databases and see if they could generate more points of contact. The brute force analysis of high-level, remote-work analyst and researcher positions was taking longer than expected since they hadn’t figured any way to impose geographic constraints. Not every employer recorded where their remote employees resided, since many employers in fact encouraged their remote scientists to travel and move around. And since a remote job could be done from anywhere, there was no reason to limit their search to employers in Ingsport or Terrapoli when looking for leads on Ackles’ job. Jared was exhausted and cranky, and he really just wanted to bury himself inside J’s body and drift off to sleep. 

“She needs your help,” came J’s unexpected reply.

The story that followed was, again, somehow suspicious, but completely plausible. Lisha was on the run from an abusive fiancé who was a high-ranking Central Authority informant. His position afforded him access to resources like CAPS liverecords, drone feeds, and local surveillance, and he had been using it to track her. She’d come to Jensen because she knew he lived outside the reach of most of the surveillance feeds, but the fiancé, someone named “Jeff,” had almost caught her twice, and she had the fingerprint bruises on her arms and wrists to prove the threat. 

“I have childhood friends who can give me a clean, sanctioned, nonsurveillance job in Terrapoli where I’ll be out of Jeff’s reach,” Lisha explained, “But I have to get to Terrapoli first, and when I realized Je—J’s boyfriend had security clearance and surveillance access, I had to ask if there’s any way you can help me get into the city without being seen.”

Lisha sounded sincere, and everything she said rang true. She even provided a few more names that checked out when Jared ran them through the Agency database, but he couldn’t quite shake that something was wrong.

“It will take time,” he admitted. A few quick calls to Sheppard without a lot of specifics, and Jared managed to secure a time the next evening when they’d have a 15-minute window to pass Lisha onto a hovercar without being seen and clearance for the car to take her into the secure part of Terropoli where there was no surveillance. Lisha was thankful and effusively polite, and Jared was glad he was able to help J’s friend.

J, however, didn’t seem to relax. He let Lisha stay in his house alone (giving her the bedroom) and for the first time in weeks, opted to sleep in Jared’s bed. It seemed that no amount of sex or kisses could get Jensen to relax, and when Jared finally drifted off to sleep, he knew J was still wide awake.

Despite J’s apparent unease, he was his usual talkative self the next morning, making caff for Jared before heading back to his house to work. And the transfer that night went off without a hitch. By 2015, Lisha was safely tucked away in the opaqued windows of a hovercar with priority access to a secure section of Terropoli.

It was only later that night, drifting off in J’s bed that Jared realized today was the first time he had ever seen J travel into the on-grid, camera-populated portions of Ingsport.

~~~

It had been two weeks since J’s mysterious friend. Jared thought J still seemed anxious, but then again, he might be imagining it. Their conversation and sex life had been as vibrant as ever, and just this morning, J had suggested two additional sources of information on Ackles’ family—having lived in the outer provinces as a kid, J knew a lot about rural recordkeeping (including their hardcopy and hard-to-alter digital) records storage. Jared had put in the requests as soon as he arrived at work, and hoped they might yield information that would give him some leverage on Deputy Director Ackles, at the very least so they might learn more about Jensen Ackles’ habits or education that might help them to pin down his location.

“Good work, Padalecki,” Sheppard said, as he approached Jensen’s desk, holding one of his hard-copy-only, unenhanced paper file folders. He passed the sheaf of papers to Jared.

“What’s this?” Jared asked.

“We finally got a response on two former associates of Ackles from his time in the PLF. Samantha Ferris and Felicia Day. There’s no indication he’s had any contact with them since Minkata, but Day was apparently his confidante, and Ferris one of his recruiters. The Central Authority’s high-level source says Ferris was ousted from the PLF Council last year, but is still loyal to the organization. Day, on the other hand, bailed nine months ago, and has been on the run ever since. She was seen two districts from Ingsport, so chances are she’s here. If we can spot her, we should be able to track her to Ackles.”

Jared opened the folder and found two full-color, 2-D photos inside. The first was an attractive, middle-aged woman with light brown hair and a serious expression. The second…

Red hair, pale skin, tall, slender, freckles. Similar in appearance to J, but female and, in the photo anyway, unabashedly happy. The problem was, he _knew_ the face staring up at him. It was J’s friend Lisha.

“Something wrong?” Sheppard asked, noting Jared’s hesitation.

“Uh, no, um, sorry, I just thought for a second I recognized this one, Day, is it?”

Sheppard nodded.

“You said she’s trying to get here? There was a 15-minute coverage gap in one of the outer boroughs yesterday, a drone malfunctioned and the area CAPS got called in for retraining. She could have gotten in, or out, during that time.”

Sheppard said something that sounded vaguely encouraging, but it didn’t really register. Jared excused himself to go follow up on a lead, and rushed home as fast as he could. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find, or if he was expecting to confront J, but he certainly did not expect to see J, bundled up in a hooded woolene knitshirt and brimmed cap, heading on foot in the direction of the nearest tram.

He certainly didn’t expect to follow J back to the spot where they’d watched Lisha— _Felicia_ —step into the hovercar, or to see J flinch in shock, when a CAPS walked by on the far side of the street. 

What surprised him the most, of course, was that J seemed to know he was there.

“Hello, Jared,” J said, turning to face him, holding a tiny package in one hand, and looking incredibly sad.

Years of training had Jared aiming his weapon at Jensen. 

“I didn’t do it,” J said without explanation, “I keep a journal. Every day. I write down my thoughts, intentions. My decisions. It’s hard copy. They couldn’t edit it. I said ‘no,’ I refused, I got myself as far away from Minkata as I could. I waited for when it was supposed to happen, I stayed awake until I was _sure_ …” J insisted.

Jared lowered his weapon. “What are you talking about?”

“Here!” J shoved a tattered hardcopy notebook into Jared’s hands. “It’s not perfect. I can’t be sure because I didn’t write the day of. I wrote the day before and the day after, but I _know_ what I decided, and I tried, I tried everything so they couldn’t use me. I was halfway to Terropoli…” J continued muttering half-to himself, while Jared turned his attention to the book in his hands.

In tiny cramped handwriting on the open page of the book, about a fifth of the way through, was a noted date followed by paragraph of text:

_Ides of Fives minus One: I made the decision. No. I don’t care what Jeff wants or how much he saved me. I can’t help the PLF murder children, innocents. I’m leaving tonight. I say ‘no.’ I’m not a slave. I won’t be treated as a slave. I joined for freedom, and this isn’t it._

The next line was dark, jagged, the letters larger, shakier, more angular. If it wasn’t for the same distinctive curl on each capital “I” Jared would have assumed the text was written by a different person.

_Ides of Fives plus One: it wasn’t me. I swear, it wasn’t me. The attack was supposed to happen at noon. At noon, I was in Angletai tucked into a cargo tram. The attack was supposed to hit Minkata Tower. Not Citygate. I stated awake. I didn’t sleep. I waited until after midnight in Shapling before I holed up in a warehouse. There was copper plating-- cage\--it should have blocked the signal. I woke up in the warehouse in Shapling too. I wear gloves! I wasn’t there. I swear, I wasn’t there. I believe it. I had on gloves when I went to sleep and when I woke up. Please tell me they didn’t—_

But the frantic scrawl broke off and didn’t complete the thought.

“They could have hacked you,” Jared murmured.

“I know, but I swear I didn’t want to, and I don’t think they did.” J’s-- _Jensen’s_ expression—belied the certainty of his words. He didn’t know. He couldn’t tell for sure.

Jared fell back against the warehouse wall, his stomach twisting in shock. He liked J—Jensen. No, if he was honest, he was _in love_ with Jensen. He thought back to all the quiet morning _coffees_ and the fascinating discussions of geopolitical history, all the stories and tales Jensen had regaled him with about the space travel, colonization, and pre-Terran exploration. Jensen’s curiosity and enthusiasm had blossomed. He’d grown from a shy and sheltered, somewhat awkward quasi-recluse to a true friend, a friend whose opinion Jared valued above all else. He trusted _Jensen’s_ instincts more than his own. He believed him before he believed his boss, his colleagues, even his own gut. But J was Jensen and Jensen was the most wanted being alive. He was a murderer and terrorist and an illegal—a _Pio_ with alien genetics. A security threat. A slave with cerebral architecture who didn’t know his own mind, who someone else could program and control at will. 

But Jared couldn’t deny the feelings he had. The affection, passion, trust he felt burned as strongly now in the face of realization as it had when they first kissed over morning coffee, as the first time they made love in Jensen’s bed. 

And that was it… Jensen had never really lied. Sure, he lied about his name, but it was hardly a strong disguise, but the clues were all there. The job, the seclusion, the mysterious friend showing up out of the blue. If Jared had been more suspicious, if he hadn’t let his guard down, he would have seen it. 

But he didn’t believe that this kind, thoughtful person he had come to love could have done what _Jensen Ackles_ was said to have done. And the words on the page just made him more certain the stories had the wrong man. But what could he do to prove it?

“We’re vulnerable when we sleep. There are mental disciplines, supplements—taking extra tryptophan and melatonin makes it harder for the signal to mesh, sleeping in a faraday cage can block a lot of interference, active dreaming—it all makes it less likely that they can control you, but nothing is 100% foolproof,” Jensen said, his voice sounding slightly less manic. He sniffed, wiped at tears that were gathering in his eyes, and stood tall. “I’d been awake for 72 hours on the Ides of Fives. I had limited supplement supplies and while I went to sleep focused on the dream, I don’t remember dreaming. That happens sometimes when you’re really tired.”

“It could also mean your memory was altered,” Jared suggested.

Jensen shrugged. “Well altered or I was just programmed. If the programming’s strong enough you just go blank. No memories formed. I don’t remember anything between getting chipped and sometime between my sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays. Part of that was calibration and retraining, they keep your mind locked down when they first turn it on to ensure there are no… difficulties if the programming has a glitch. It’s one thing if your slave just sits there drooling because the housecleaning program skipped a step or didn’t load right. It’s something else if your slave decides to try to kill you or themselves with cleaning chems or tools because the program didn’t load and they had a free thought.”

Jared shuddered.

“But training usually only lasts six months. I’ve got about a year and half of blankspace. No memories formed. There’s nothing there to retrieve. Training’s not the only reason to lock down a slave. I found out about two years after I joined the PLF I spent the year before my memories restarted on the household staff of a minister who has a notorious appetite for children. I don’t know for certain what happened, what she did, and my brain was incapable of forming memories, but I know that after… My status in the CAPS archive with my next… placement said ‘nonvirgin, sexual programming – advanced/specialized.’” 

Bile rose in Jared’s throat and he looked away. “I’m sorry,” he started.

“Don’t apologize. Words don’t mean anything. Wishes don’t mean anything. As far as you’re concerned, I’m not a person,” Jensen shot back.

“No!” Jared reached out, but Jensen flinched away. Ashamed, Jared lowered his hand and said again, on a shaky breath, “No. I’ve always disagreed. I just didn’t know how bad it was. You taught me. You showed me, without even saying anything seditious, you just quoted facts and stats and everything you knew, and I opened my eyes.” He reached out his hands again, beckoning Jensen forward.

Jensen hesitated for a moment then closed the gap between them putting his arms around Jared’s waist and pulling him close, strong, lithe arms holding on as they breathed.

Jared was shaking now, shaking with the fear and realization of their circumstances, but he couldn’t let go. Not physically, or mentally, or emotionally. His arms wrapped around Jensen, sliding up to the back of his head to pull him in for a kiss. Lips parted, their tongues danced, and for a handful of heartbeats Jared tried to breath him in, to meld with Jensen and hold him with the strength and grace that Jensen had displayed when he welcomed Jared into his body.

“They saw me, you know. The CAPS have a record, the facial recognition would have been instantaneous. With my priority, the local cops and Agency will be here in minutes,” Jensen said when they had to separate for air.

Jared rested his head against Jensen’s. “Why did you come back? Why did you come back here?” he asked. “You know it was a risk or you wouldn’t have asked for my help with Felicia.”

“I had to know. I had to know if she betrayed me, or they used her to betray me,” Jensen answered. “The Felicia I knew never would have come to me after Minkata. When I left—she agreed with me. She _helped_ me get the transit clearance to leave the Minkata perimeter. I knew Jeff had to—”

“Jeff?” Jared asked, “Jeffrey Dean Morgan, you mean the leader of the PLF?” _That_ was the Jeff who was the “fiancé” Felicia was supposedly running from.”

“More like puppet master, playing us like marionettes, tugging on our strings, using our minds to craft his vision of resistance.”

As so frequently happened, it took Jared a moment to remember what a “marionette was,” but the pre-Terran term came to mind easily enough, the idea of wooden figures controlled by strings, giving the semblance of movement and choice but controlled by someone else, hidden, unseen. “You _know_ Jeff,” Jared marveled, unsure if he was impressed or horrified.

“All those stories were personal knowledge, but this isn’t really the time. I can hear the sirens.”

“I can’t—”

“I’m a Pio, remember, we’re not quite human, that’s one of the reasons they don’t trust us. They’ll be here in under a minute.” Jensen’s smile turned sad again. “I can’t take you with me. You’ve got to take this,” he pressed the hardcopy book into Jared’s hands, and motioned for him to tuck it inside his goat. “And if this is what I think it is, Felicia may have betrayed me, but she’s trying to solve what went wrong, she kept her word, she’s at the archive,” he said pressing the small package Jared had watched him retrieve from a nearby park bench into Jared’s hands.”

“I—” but Jared didn’t know how to respond.

“I’m sorry. I love you. What we have is real. I never wanted any of this. I worked on the singularity bomb as a tool to target spaceports the CA was using to space Pio kids. The idea was to take out the spaceports while they were vacant. These were old ports, only used when they were shipping Pios offworld. They’re all on the continental rim, in isolated locations. A quick, controlled implosion that removed the spaceport entirely would have slowed them down, bought us time to rescue the kids, teach them how to overcome the architecture. I never wanted to kill innocents and I have no quarrel with humans. I just wanted freedom. The rest was Jeff’s idea.”

Jensen looked away and when he turned back, there were tears streaming down his cheeks. “There here,” he whispered and stepped back. “Now either kill me, or arrest me, because I’m not taking you with me. Please, Jared. Don’t let yourself get sucked into this nightmare.”

The sirens were audible, the lights visible, and Jared reacted on instinct once again. Datachip and book stowed inside his jacket, he raised his gun on the man he loved and waited for the cavalry to arrive.


	6. Part V

_In the end, I can only believe what I know to be true. I’m not the monster._

~ Jensen Ross Ackles, statement, 5119.09.12

Part 5:

Jensen had lost time again. The officers—local police, not Agency—had hit him with some sort of EMP or electric shock weapon. He couldn’t be sure, they’d shot him from behind. Either one was extremely dangerous for a chipped individual, since sometimes the circuitry didn’t reboot, and the alterations to the brain were such that the individual couldn’t survive without the hardware.

His throat was rough, his mouth dry. Brainstem failure. When the circuits crashed, Jensen had crashed and they’d forced a tube down his throat to make him breathe. How long he’d been out, he didn’t know. His mind felt squished, constrained. They’d been hammering on him while he was out, trying to purge memories they didn’t want him to have, force him to give up the information they wanted to know.

Luckily Jensen had survived worse at the hands of his trainers. 

Drip, drip, drip. The pounding of the water on the synthcrete floor penetrated the fog in Jensen’s head, the one constant, rising above the high-pitched ringing in his ears, drowning out the building’s creaks and groans and the distant mental squeal of dozens and dozens of CAPS, forcing its way past even the incessant droning of his interrogator. 

Gravity exists. The water will fall. Again, and again, and again. Drip. Drip. Drip. One constant. One point of certainty even in the face of unfathomable lies. Even knowing now... Or not knowing. Knowing he would never know?

The interrogator asked another question. Or at least Jensen thought it was a question. Truth was, he couldn’t make out the words over the ringing. Too many blows to the head or maybe the lingering effects of a hard reboot... he honestly couldn’t tell what was being said.

Drip, drip, drip. 

Jensen let his mind wander away from the pain, past the shackles around his ankles and the straps digging into his wrists. He ignored the pain coursing through his body and focused on the sound. The certainty and consistency and inevitability—

Drip. Drip. Drip.

It didn’t matter what happened. Not to him, not anymore. He had to believe that the datachip meant Felicia was on the right track. She’d promised him she would send word. She wouldn’t have risked it if she hadn’t found a real lead. A history of directives. Information on whose side Jeff was really on. Confirmation whether Jensen’s father was the one actually calling the shots about who was chipped and who wasn’t. Proof the program targeted humans now too. Any one of those could bring _real_ hope. And if he was going away, locked forever in the box of nothingness inside his own skull or just snuffed out, it would have to be enough. That, and Jared stopped being an idiot and narrowly avoided appearing like a conspirator.

Now he was in limbo, waiting, and it was out of his hands. Soon, one way or another, he wouldn’t even know...

Rough hands manhandling his head, vise grip around his jaw pulled him out of his reverie, away from the fuzzy haze of nothing and back towards the world of pain. 

He looked up through glassy, unfocused eyes and blood-caked lashes to glare at the man above. He probably looked like a deranged idiot. Angry, menacing, half out of his mind. He didn’t care.

“I don’t like repeating myself, Mr. Ackles. Minkata, who gave the orders? What do you suspect, and who else did you tell!?” the man demanded, voice breaking up to Jensen’s ears as his pitch and volume smacked up against the frequencies Jensen couldn’t really hear at the moment. 

“Shouldn’t ask compound... questions,” he hissed out, breaking off into an ironic chuckle that quickly turned into a hacking cough, made worse because he couldn’t get his hands to his face to brush away any of the blood or phlegm.

The man didn’t take long to start berating him again, even slapping him across the face. But just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.

There was a murmur of voices. Silence. Footsteps. Another individual he didn’t know. “Well it’s your lucky day, Mr. Ackles, the star fed on your case wants a crack at you before we’re done. We’ll continue this party later.” And with that he was unstrapped and moved, then re-cuffed in an ordinary cell and left, waiting.

~~~

“Would it matter to you, Special Agent Padalecki, to know if he really did it?” Sheppard asked, pacing around with his hands in his pockets as he spoke.

Jared’s head popped up, a little thrown by the question. “Of course, it matters!” he snapped. Why would Sheppard even ask?

Sheppard fixed him with an inscrutable stare, gave a little nod, and smiled. “Well, you see, to someone in your role, Mr. Ackles actual guilt or innocence from this one event would typically irrelevant. You confirmed his identity. You know the man you have in custody actually is Jensen R. Ackles, who is a wanted terrorist. There is an active warrant for his arrest and apprehension, and authorization for his execution in the event of any exigencies. You are neither judge nor jury. You are an agent of this government tasked with the duty and privilege of enforcing the law. Your prisoner’s guilt or innocence us immaterial to your job.”

Jared felt his insides twist again; that unsettling, unfamiliar dread rearing its ugly head once again. How could he question his orders? How could he befriend—have feelings for—a monster like Jensen? 

But how could _Jensen_ be a monster? How could someone so good and kind and selfless have murdered five million innocent people? And if Jensen _was_ innocent, or at least not guilty of murdering a million people, how could Jared _not_ question his orders? How could he go through with a custody transfer that would almost certainly result in Jensen’s execution?

Sheppard was staring at him, that same inscrutable gaze. He was looking for something, waiting for something, what, Jared didn’t know. Struggling for something to say, Jared stammered, “If I suspect we have the wrong suspect that matters to the investigation. I have a voice, a responsibility, to ensure the laws are followed. If the wrong person is punished then the real perpetrators are still out there, unpunished. It’s important.”

“No, it really isn’t,” Sheppard shot back. He walked over to the far wall, turned, and faced Jared, leaning against the wall and regarding Jared with an expression somewhere between exasperation and disappointment. “Not in this case. Even if Mr. Ackles didn’t cause the Minkata incident you know he is a member of the PLF, or at least he was, at some point in time. He has the cerebral architecture. He’s admitted his past membership to you, hasn’t he? And even if that was coerced, you know he’s Pio—”

“ _Part _Pio,” Jared interjected. “His Pio ancestry could be generations, centuries removed.”__

__Sheppard just glared and kept talking. “He is Pio, so his existence within planetary borders is itself a crim. New Terra Constitution Article I, Section 12, ‘No entity descended from Pioneer blood shall be permitted to enter or live within New Terra’s boundaries as the existence of such entities is a threat to the continued survival of the human race.’”_ _

__Jared’s face fell. How many times had he shaken his head in dismay at others making the same stupid argument? _I’m not really breaking the law, I can justify it, not me, but my friend is just a little bit Pio..._ And now he was arguing the same thing. _ _

__“I could keep on quoting the constitution or the multitude of statutes addressing exactly what the consequences are for any Pios found in violation of Article I, section 12, but I daresay you get the point. Regardless of whether Mr. Ackles is the monster behind Minkata, you still have incontrovertible proof he is a member of a list 1 terrorist group and is also an illegal Pio within New Terran boundaries, both of which are offenses punishable by death in circumstances that are met here. So, I ask you again, why does it matter if Ackles is guilty? “_ _

__“It matters to me! Because I—” but Jared couldn’t form the words. Decades of conditioning kicked in, and he realized what he almost said, in his boss’s office to his boss at NIA headquarters, where every breath was recorded, and he had come perilously close to implicating himself as an accessory and sympathizer to everything Jensen was and may have done, which were bad enough crimes for an ordinary person, but for an NIA agent, meant treason and an even swifter execution than Jensen was facing._ _

__“Because you know him? Because he’s a good guy, and you can’t believe he would actually murder a million people? Because you think he shows contrition? Because it wasn’t his fault his mother was a full-blooded Pio and he didn’t have any choice in accepting the cerebral architecture? Or because you’re in love with him?” Sheppard offered._ _

__Jared’s mouth opened and closed several times in shock. Cold swept through him and he shuddered, finding his lungs no longer seemed to know how to draw air. “I— I didn’t say—”_ _

__“Don’t give yourself a heart attack Jared, I turned the recording off before you ever stepped into this room. All anyone else will see is us having another boring status update. It’s a randomized program that draws from the two dozen most recent encounters between us in this office. I designed the program myself, and it has saved my ass and the assessment of others a few times, although, never before from something quite so... monumental.”_ _

__“You knew I—”_ _

__“Had feelings for him? I’m pretty site blind, burrowing cave slugs on Mars picked up on that. But romantic attraction isn’t the important bit here, plenty of people have turned in lovers for committing crimes. You befriended him. You’ve gotten to know who he really is, not what he’s supposed to have done. I always said you had the potential to be the best and brutes we ever produced. And you are. Your sense of justice goes beyond the immediate technicalities to the big picture. You care about and inherently understand antiquated topics like remorse, agency, duress, and get at the morality underpinning every question. That instinct has served you well, only now you’ve run smack up against the ugliest truth at the heart of our society, and you are going to have to make a choice.”_ _

__“And you’re disappointed in me, going to make sure I make the right choice and don’t sabotage my career,” Jared assumed._ _

__“Who said anything about your career? We’re talking much bigger picture here, life and death, right and wrong, freedom, existence, self-determination and all that. And no, Jared, you haven’t disappointed me yet. And if you’re the person I think you are, you’re not going to disappoint me today.” Sheppard crossed his arms over his chest and sidled over to his desk. In contrast with his almost manic energy from earlier, his movements were weary, burdened. Every step looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Sit.”_ _

__Jared stood his ground._ _

__“Trust me, kid, you’ll want to sit for this.”_ _

__So, Jared sat and did his best not to flinch as the visitor’s chair made a loud, metallic grating noise as he dragged it across the floor. He looked up at the hidden monitor reflexively, and settled in, apprehensive._ _

__“They’re not watching,” Sheppard reassured._ _

__“You haven’t called me ‘kid’ since I turned 30,” Jared mused._ _

__Sheppard just cocked an eyebrow at him._ _

__They sat in silence for about a minute, while Sheppard appeared to collect his thoughts. Before Jared gave into his impatience, Sheppard began. “No one knows if Jensen did it, not even Jensen.”_ _

__“What do you mean—” But Sheppard silenced him with a glance._ _

__“As I am sure Jensen has told you everyone in the PLF has cerebral hardware. What he may not have told you, but you likely figured out anyway, that every single Pio in New Terra’s borders has cerebral hardware.” Sheppard let the revelation sit there, hanging in the air between them, waiting for something._ _

__Realization hit Jared like a slap in the face and he actually sat up straighter. “We did it? We _do_ it,” he said with more confidence. “Rather than executing adults and ejecting children, the New Terran government decided to chip everyone. Implant cybernetic overrides in a Pio’s brain and you remove their autonomy, their agency, any threat they might pose to humans, and you take away their status as sapient, sentient beings, at least by our current laws, so it doesn’t violate the constitution. Meanwhile the government gets effective slave labor without violating any laws.” It was sickeningly brilliant._ _

__Sheppard nodded slowly. “And it was sold as being a more humane alternative, especially to humans who partnered with Pios and had kids. Faced with the choice of seeing their partner executed and their children cast off into space in the general direction of the last known Pio colonies to fend for themselves, what do you think most people chose? Especially when it came with a pardon or reduction in charges for the guilty human? Of course, not everyone saw it that way, and you bet your ass Pios think of themselves as sentient beings who want to live and choose for themselves, and as Jensen is a prime example, the architecture isn’t infallible. People rebelled. Quietly at first. Pios and humans alike, looking for ways around the architecture. And about 250 years ago, someone figured it out. For about 50 years there were a slew of mixed race kids that were born, blended in, and went unchipped. Many had careers, lives, families. Until one day, someone had second thoughts—it’s not clear whether it was a human, a Pio, or some mix of both. Planetary government got wise to what was happening. There was a crackdown.”_ _

__“The Fuolvite Rebellion,” Jared realized._ _

__Sheppard nodded again. “Only the rebelling had been quiet and rather peaceful and going on for half a century. It was the government’s response to the discovery that caused the unrest, not the rebellion itself. They tested everyone, and millions were rounded up. Some of them were people with no clue they had any Pio ancestry at all. And that scared the crap out of the average human on the street. It turned neighbor against neighbor and things got really ugly. Millions were executed or ejected, but at least as many were chipped, because the government wasn’t about to give up its silent workforce or admit to their error. So many of the laws we know today were implemented: mandatory screenings, genetic evaluation before employment, periodic random blood tests, surveillance in all government offices and schools. The protocols on the architecture got much stricter, and had things stayed as they were immediately after the rebellion, maybe that would have been the end of it. There was a joint resolution passed to retire the practice of chipping after the current properties expired.”_ _

__Jensen shuddered._ _

__“Of course, it didn’t take too long for someone to get fed up with the limitations of having slaves whose programming essentially restricted all higher brain function. So, someone loosened the protocols to allow for some independent decision making and someone else proposed memory modification protocols—if the Pio slaves didn’t know they were Pio slaves or didn’t remember there was an alternative to their situation. And we got in the habit of memory wiping anyone who showed resistance or learned the learned the wrong information. But life is resilient and some brains are just more resistant than others. The resistance started up again, but they too, took more precautions.”_ _

__“They figured out how to hack the government control protocols,” Jared supplied, putting things together from what Jared had told him._ _

__“Or someone on our end gave them the passwords, I’m not sure if anyone knows. The point is, upon inducing new members PLF takes control of their members’ architecture. And for their human or occasional unchipped Pio, they take the opportunity to chip them as a matter of operational security. Anyone gets captured, PLF control can make sure they no longer know anything of importance. Of course, the control extends to every other function of the architecture. They can lock it down and use their own members as robotic slaves, remove access to certain brain functions to limit fear, amplify aggression, or ensure passivity, or even take control of their members, operate them like puppets._ _

__“The problem is there’s no good way to tell whether someone was puppeteered or memory wiped, and there are three likely scenarios for what happened with Minkata. Option one, which I believe is what Jensen told you he believes happened, Jensen really did leave and got himself the hell away from Minkata as soon as he could once he knew what they were planning. His role in Citygate was a fabrication, likely reinforced with memory modifications and other architecture tweaks to others. In that case, Jensen is innocent or as close to it as he can get under the circumstances._ _

__“Option 2, Jensen tried to bail, so they overrode him and used him to do it anyway. In that case the accounts are likely true. Jensen did everything they say he did, only he wasn’t the one in control of himself when he did it. That’s the explanation I think Jensen is most afraid is true,” Sheppard admitted._ _

__“How—” Jared started, but details Jensen had told him crept through. “He was asleep. He said he ran and made sure he was hell and gone away from Minkata when it was supposed to happen. Only he woke up the next day and it had happened anyway, later than it was supposed to, so it had an even more devastating effect. But he woke up in the same place...”_ _

__“Don’t you think a highly organized and resourceful organization with the ability to directly control its members would have the wherewithal to transport a single operative far more effectively than an individual with limited resources on the run from everyone. You know as well as I do they could have nabbed or remote activated Jensen and transported him to Shapling and back in the eight hours he slept.”_ _

__It was possible. More than possible, it might explain why Jensen, understandably paranoid with hair-trigger reflexes had slept eight full hours, slept through an event so destructive its effects were felt hundreds of miles away, farther out than where Jensen was. Maybe he hadn’t been sleeping at all... then again, “They also could have kept him asleep so he couldn’t interfere.”_ _

__“True, very true, and then we’re back in Option 1, but with a twist, and the possibility sure isn’t going to let Jensen sleep better at night since he’s still wondering if he’d just gone along with it if fewer people would have died. But then there’s the option that he did it at the time it was always supposed to happen, he did it willingly, and he had his own memory modified after the fact to protect him from capture. Make him think he turned against the PLF, go on the run, but remove any actual knowledge of the real plan from his mind, and it gives them a defense, buys time, and increases the likelihood an ethical, morally minded agent might find sympathy for him, maybe even take pity on him.”_ _

__Jared jerked to his feet moving before he was aware of the decision to move. He didn’t _pity_ Jensen! But, oh god what if that was exactly what he’d done? What if Jensen was everything they’d always thought he was, cold, calculating, heartless, without value for human life, willing even to modify himself to gain an advantage. Had Jared been suckered in? Hell, what if Jensen was just an immoral or amoral monster and someone else had made the choice to modify his memory? Had Jared been so blind he fell in love with a façade? But if that was true, who was Jensen? Was he the conscientious, caring, remorseful, man who at least believed he had tried to avert a catastrophe and was willingly sitting in a cell knowing full well he would soon be executed for what he may not have done? Or was he the cruel mastermind behind the largest act of terrorism New Terra had seen since humans settled on the planet? If Jensen’s memories were different could he still be that person? When his current self had different convictions? “Even if he did do it, knowingly, that isn’t who he is now. He cares more about stopping the singularity bomb than running—”_ _

__“Or he cares more about you,” Sheppard offered._ _

__“Either way, would he still be the same person? Can you punish him for something someone wearing his body did when he isn’t that person anymore?” Jared demanded. And it hit him._ _

__“And in a world where anyone’s memories can be removed, modified, changed, who is an individual? If someone can create or delete a criminal for the sake of perpetuating a crime, how can we punish it? How do we deter it? And how can we get justice or retribution when the person we punish is not the person who committed the crime?” Sheppard asked._ _

__“I don’t know, but that sure as hell isn’t the job I signed up for,” Jared shot back._ _

__“Maybe not, but it is the world we live in.”_ _

__Jared raked his hands across his skull tugging at his hair in frustration. It was times like these he was glad he’d gone through the effort of seeking a variance from Agency standards. His hair made him suitable for undercover work, but also gave him something really satisfying to tug on. “Isn’t there some way to check who gave the commands? Was his memory erased? When who did it, would his brain or his architecture show if it had been remotely operated or overridden? Is there a log somewhere and if that would be wiped, would there be a backup?”_ _

__“Maybe, perhaps. But to start with, in this case that would require devoting government resources to tap the mind of a piece of illegal machinery documented to have committed terrorism and treason when the government doesn’t even acknowledge the machinery has those capabilities or even exists, and the answers would likely require tapping other illegal machinery operating outside government control. Who, precisely, is going to care? And who would authorize such a thing?”_ _

__“I care!”_ _

__“And this is where you realize that doing the legal thing and doing the right thing are not always the same option. And you must decide who you are, Jared,” Sheppard said looking up at him with sad eyes. “Is the record out there? Perhaps, perhaps not. But finding it is not something you will ever get authorization to do from this Agency, especially not when looking for the answer might show it was actually the fourth option._ _

__Jared stopped tugging at his hair and froze. “Fourth option? I thought you said there were three?”_ _

__“There are three, assuming, the PLF really was responsible for Minkata.”_ _

__“They claimed responsibility. Who else would want to kill five million humans and cripple our infrastructure?”_ _

__“Well Minkata certainly was the sort of event that a desperate group of marginalized, oppressed slaves could use to try to demand attention. But it also did a very good job of rallying the human population against Pios, didn’t it? How aware of Pios was your average New Terran before Minkata? Somewhat? A little? Hell, how aware were _you_? Maybe you studied the Fuolvite Rebellion in school but never really gave much thought to how Pio-human conflicts continued to this day? And how aware is the average New Terran now? Wouldn’t you say we’re all more likely to fear Pios, to agree they are a continued threat to human survival? Wouldn’t you be more sympathetic to the steps our government has taken to protect us from Pios? Even the cerebral architecture if its true origin and propose came to light?” He fixed Jared with another knowing look. “Do you really you really think you really think a government that went through all that trouble to control and conceal its disavowed population of aliens and alien hybrids would have no way to override or reset its hardware if it fell into enemy hands.”_ _

__“You’re saying the government, our government did this, killed millions of innocent humans to keep us afraid of the Pios and support a war?” Jared demanded._ _

__“I’m saying nothing of the kind. I don’t know. You don’t know. Jensen certainly doesn’t know. Just like we don’t know everyone who died was human or innocent. It is just a possibility, but one that exists, and one that the search for answers could reveal to be true, if there are answers out there at all.”_ _

__“What do you want me to do?”_ _

__“I want you to be who I know you are. You have to make a choice. I made my choice a long time ago,” Sheppard tapped his desk and looked around the room meaningfully. “I decided what my role would be, how I would live with what I know and what I don’t, and how I might help any others who come to the same realizations. But I can’t make that choice for you. When you step outside that door this nice little Faraday cage outside reality is going to collapse like a bubble and everything you say and do will have consequences. Will you choose what is legal or what is right?”_ _

__“And if I want a third option, to be able to uphold my oath without subverting or denigrating it by condemning innocents or ignoring the sentience of others just because a law says it is so?”_ _

__“Then you figure out how you want to try to do that,” Sheppard said cryptically. “I’ll be here doing what I always do.”_ _

__Grasping at straws, Jared asked, “What does Jensen want?” because that was the one thing no one had even stopped to consider. No matter his feelings or how much he rankled at the sense of injustice, it was Jensen’s life or death or autonomy, and Jensen’s reality and sense of self that could implode if they went looking for answers._ _

__“You’ll have to ask him, I haven’t spoken to him.”_ _

__Jared flashed back through everything he had told Sheppard, stomach knotting again at the realization, “Then how did you know what Jensen told me?”_ _

__“You don’t think that a government or any entity with power and authority who had the ability to and had actually implanted hardware in their enemies would stop at their enemies?”_ _

__“But they haven’t—they test all of us. I don’t have hardware, I’m not Pio,” he protested._ _

__“You think they’d let you remember if they did?” Only Sheppard didn’t say it. The sentence just formed in Jared’s mind as if spoken in Sheppard’s voice._ _

__“Am I a Pio?_ _

__Sheppard shrugged and spoke aloud, “Who knows. It’s not like they’d let us know if the test results said something other than 100% human, or if it did that would stop them from taking steps to ensure outcomes. And before you ask, no, they don’t know I know or if they do, they haven’t let me know.” He paused and a little line formed between his eyebrows. _Of course, there is always the possibility they’re using me.__ _

__“Then how do we know if any of this is true, is real?”_ _

__“We can’t. But what you do with that is something you have to decide for yourself.” Sheppard glanced at his watch. “I think the prisoner is about ready for you to question him, don’t you _think_?” Sheppard asked, tapping his head. _ _

__And Jared understood. “Yeah, I think it is.” He turned and walked to the door, every step settling on him like a leaden weight._ _

__When his hand was on the door handle, Sheppard called out, “Jared!”_ _

__Jared looked over his shoulder at his long-time mentor._ _

__“Good luck out there. And whatever you decide, I know you’ll do the right thing.”_ _

__Jared nodded, unable to form words, but feeling gratitude strong enough he hoped Sheppard sensed it (or felt it or heard it, or whatever it was that passed between them. He was pretty sure it worked. Then he pushed open the door and stepped out into the unknown._ _

____

~~~

Jensen didn’t care, anymore, he just rolled with it. His mind had already slipped back into the nothingness, it was getting harder and harder to hold on. Wouldn’t be long now.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Time went fluid, slid sideways. Some tiny part of his mind realized it must be the architecture activating, taking over, twisting his brain and memory and desires until he was what they wanted him to be, thought what they wanted him to think, whoever they were, whoever was pulling the strings. But that part of Jensen who was aware, who cared was smaller and smaller and farther and farther away. It wouldn’t be long now.

Drip, drip, drip.

In the background, he thought he heard a voice, out of place. But he couldn’t remember what it meant.

Jensen looked at Jared with an expression somewhere between grief and horror... and disbelief. But then again, why would Jensen believe a word out of Jared’s mouth? As an agent, he had every reason to lie and manipulate and no motivation, readily apparent to tell the truth. Hadn’t Jared just suspected Sheppard of trying to entrap him? Would he do any differently in Jensen’s position?

But they were running out of time. How could he convince a man who he not 24 hours ago turned over to a veritable death squad to trust him?

_Think! Idiot._

If he was interpreting everything that had happened in Sheppard’s office correctly, then he, and likely every one of his coworkers, or maybe not, but at least he and some undefined number in government service were outfitted with the same cerebral architecture as Jensen. Whether that meant he was an alien, or part alien, Jared didn’t know. Similarly, he hadn’t the faintest clue if it was _the same_ with the same vulnerabilities and uncertainties, the threat of hacking, possibility of memory wiping, and vulnerability outside control, or if it was just similar. He hoped his mind was his own, but he didn’t—couldn’t—know. But Sheppard had reached out, communicated, spoken without saying a word. It had convinced Jared, maybe it would do the same...

_We don’t have time. I’m like you,_ Jared thought as hard as he could in Jensen’s direction. 

By the building disgust in Jensen’s expression, he wasn’t doing it right. 

“This is some kind of joke to you, right?” Jensen spluttered, his voice taking on a wounded tone, breath hitching, thought he tried to hide it. “I’m either a monster, or I’m not a person, so either way it’s okay to fuck with me, have a laugh at my expense, right?” Jensen crossed his arms and stepped back from the transparent barrier sliding backwards into the shadows of the cell’s interior. “No thanks. I don’t feel like participating in your little Pio-baiting games.” Jensen seemed to shut down. “Threaten me all you like. I’ll get what’s coming to me. It was always an inevitably. I just wanted to play at being a person for a while.”

“Jensen,” Jared pleaded, stepping up to the cubicle’s entry, hands flailing in frustration. He pulled back just in time to avoid giving himself a nasty shock. 

But Jensen turned away. His eyes seemed to glaze over, rather like a computer going to sleep... 

And maybe... 

Jared thought back to what it had _felt_ like when Sheppard made his big reveal. It was kind of like something in his mind, something he’d always been aware of, but never acknowledged, or realized was a _thing_ to notice, had roused and like a little knock and let the information in. He’d reached back, instinctively, conceding with it—he assumed—out of reflex. But what did that feel like? What had he done, exactly? 

It felt rather like he was talking to himself, in his mind, much the way he did when he was mulling over facts about a case and he had a flash of suspicion, or insight... of course that meant he did not want to examine what, exactly those insights were (his complete and utter breakdown of identity and self could happen later, preferably when Ackles—Jensen—wasn’t about to be hauled off for vivisection or murder, and after Jensen had taught him some tips about how to keep them out of one’s head), and focused on replicating that action. If he wanted to query _himself_ about a conclusion, he would sort of _press_ with his mind. Push back, query almost with a little tickle, maybe if he pushed harder, asked with more vigor, like knocking on a door—or hell, pounding, he was desperate, he would make contact, make Jensen hear him.

_You’re not the only one whose mind is not their own,_ Jared tried.

He thought it, pushed it out again. Out of growing despair he threw it out there, like he would of he was telling the voice in his head to shut up. 

And to his surprise, Jensen’s eyes seemed to un-focus, his eyelids fluttered rapidly blinking in close succession, then opened, revealing newly focused eyes.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then Jensen turned, mouth open, but unspeaking, fixing Jared with a look between shock and betrayal. There was disbelief, too, but it had a completely different character than Jensen’s expression from a few minutes before, and this time, Jared could _feel_ it.

“What?” Jensen asked, only he hadn’t spoken it. The word was shut off, clipped, as if perhaps Jensen thought this was another method of betrayal, interrogation, or humiliation.

_Look, I don’t understand what I am. I didn’t know about this until half an hour ago. But they lie. To all of us. Who we are. What we are. Who they are. Looking back over my career, my life, I don’t know what are my thoughts and what they put there, and from what I understand, they could have made me think, feel almost anything. Twist my memories. I could have been formed minutes before I met you. Maybe I’m not me!_ Jared admitted the biggest fear that had plagued him since he’d first felt the brush of Sheppard’s mind on his.

_You’re lying._

_How could I be lying?_ Jared countered. _You’re hearing me, aren’t you?_

Jensen’s face fell. _This isn’t happening. I’m hallucinating. They’re sending me another message. Trying to—_

“Trying to what, exactly?” Jared asks aloud. “No one cares if you tell the truth. No one cares if you confess. _I_ know you don’t actually _have_ the knowledge to answer any of the questions. And your answers wouldn’t change the outcome. The government needed a scapegoat to vilify; the PLF needed a hero, or a martyr, willing or not. Jensen Ackles is their villain and savior. Two sides of the same coin, the only problem is _you’re_ a liability, a loose end. You were always only going to be collateral damage. So, what could I possibly have to gain by pretending to be able to link with you?”

Jensen’s left eyebrow ticked up towards his forehead, and a change came over him. He straightened up, lost the skittish, meek analyst persona he’d had since Jared had met him, and stood up straight, his shoulders back, relaxed. No, not _relaxed_. Tension, fear, maybe even a little regret were still wrapped up in the subtle movements of every muscle in Jensen’s body, but now, he was noticeable, charismatic. Self-confident, maybe even a little happy. At peace. _This_ was the Jensen of legends the person who inspired loyalty in people like Felicia, who gave the PLF a figurehead to rally behind, who made those Pylorans the NTNN journalists couldn’t stop interviewing swear they couldn’t imagine that nice Jensen Ackles ever hurting everyone. Whether that man ever existed, Jared could now see there was a part of him alive now in this Jensen. 

Jensen smiled, walked up to the invisible barrier, and leaned forward, bent arm raised above his head as if he was about to lean against a doorway, or maybe the window of a hovercar. He didn’t quite touch the barrier though, or at least he didn’t appear to. “You know, sometimes I wonder if my memories are false, all of them. Maybe I was never involved with the Minkata project. Maybe I was never even a memory of the PLF. Maybe I’m not really Jensen Ackles, because maybe Jensen Ackles is a figment, a legend someone created to take the fall.”

_I hadn’t thought of that,_ Jared admitted projecting the response on instinct. As if it was _safe_ to “say” it in the privacy of their cerebral link, even if he couldn’t think it out loud.

Jensen’s smile got a little bigger and he grunted out a bittersweet laugh. “The thing is, if you think like that too much, it paralyzes you. You know nothing. You are nothing. How can you do or be anyone? The thing I figured out a long time ago, or at least I think I did, is that I can only live in _this_ reality. I can be this version of me, with these facts and this history, and this knowledge. Maybe Jensen Ackles is a figment of our imaginations. It doesn’t matter because _this_ me is him. And I may not have much of anything, but I know what I remember, what I believe in here, and here.” He tapped at his head and his heart. “And I’m going to cling to every shred of dignity I have left. I’m not going to make it easy for them.” He turned around and walked back to the tiny bench in the corner of the cell. “Drop me, if you want. I’m not answering any questions.”

_Drop me._ The words bounced around in Jared’s brain, meaningful, but unfamiliar. What did that _mean_ … only he _knew_ what it meant, even though he hadn’t known people with cerebral architecture were a thing until a year ago, and certainly hadn’t known until Jensen and then Sheppard talked about it, that there were ways to make or keep people unconscious through that architecture, that he understood exactly what Jensen meant. If the prisoner was unruly or if it was just convenient to subdue them for transport. There was a technique to induce a null pulse in the prisoner’s brain. The cerebral architecture could temporarily suspend or wipe-out all electrical activity in the brain and then… take over. Effects ranged from unconsciousness—that could be prolonged for days or even weeks with help from the architecture—to…

Well that was one way to become a puppeteer. 

“Jensen, what do you want?” Jared asked, changing tacks. 

“I’m not a person. No one has ever given a fuck what I want.” Jensen spoke the bitter words, but his “true?” persona remained in control.

“No really,” Jared began, _if you could have anything right now, if someone asked you, what would you want?_

Jensen scowled for a moment, but remained where he was. _You just said you’re going to kill me, no matter what, you kind of shot your bargaining position all to hell._

Not a bargain. What do you want? Jared repeated.

There was no pause, no hesitation. The answer sprang into Jared’s mind as if bidden by his own thoughts, only it wasn’t just words but _emotion,_ understanding. 

_To live or die as a person. Not a Pio. Not a slave. I might prefer getting out there somewhere, finding a little corner of nowhere and settling down, working a job, living a life in peace. But I’d settle for a death that I could know with certainty was a death. Not a mind wipe, or a lobotomy, not some deal where they kill my body and continue to toy with whatever part of me is the architecture. But a good death. A human death. Mourners optional._

It was so simple and so sad, but there was no pity in Jared. After all, these days, it appeared the line that separated him from Jensen wasn’t so much a line, but an invisible electrostatic repulsor web, much like the one that physically separated them now. _What about finding out if you’re innocent?_

Jensen looked disappointed. _That may be a question without an answer. And even if it was possible…_

“You know I see myself there, every night. Every time I close my eyes. Look. Push. Pause. Flick.... Boom! I see how they say it happened. I see how it was supposed to happen. Sometimes I see him die.” He turned his head towards Jared and fixed him with a haunting gaze. _Why would I look if could find out the answer is ‘no’?_

This time Jared spoke out loud. “Would it change who you are? Knowing?” he asked. _If you’re guilty in some fashion, well who cares? You’re not that guy any more, and you already think you’re guilty of something. But couldn’t it bring you… peace, if you could know your memory is correct, you didn’t do it?_

“Jared, knowing what you know, how could I ever know anything with anything approaching certainty?”

_Wouldn’t you want to know if it was even the PLF or if it was really the humans killing themselves to make them hate you?_

Jensen’s eyes narrowed. _Assuming anything were remotely determinable, or even vaguely approaching certainty, what if it just turned out I was even more evil than I thought or a pawn?_

_It could change everything!_ Jared protested.

_I wish that were true._

“If it’s not just in evitable, then why did you try so hard to live? What were you living for?” Jared asks, frantically. 

_Because dignity means something. I’m not going to put myself down like a dog just because someone was always going to do it, one time or another,_ Jensen shot back. 

And suddenly, Jared was embarrassed at his pushing and prodding. He’d told Sheppard what Jensen wanted mattered, but then he’d just spent five minutes or so trying to convince Jensen he actually wanted to hunt for truth. Because that was what Jared wanted. “What if it was what I want?”

_You have everything—_

_I don’t even know who I am. For all I know, I never existed before I was assigned to move in next to you. Maybe my superiors knew who you were all along. I don’t know if I will ever know, or if I would want to know that I’m not me. But if I could find out who is pulling the strings, how we might make them stop, or how we could pull back the curtain and let everyone else in on the secret… If we could fight this war in the open, knowing the true nature of our enemies._ I _would chose that. I would choose you._

_And if I wanted to just, disappear somewhere, try again to live under the radar?_ Jensen asked.

_I would understand. I would choose you._

“Ask me your questions, because we haven’t got much time,” Jensen murmured.

It was Jared’s turn to send one of his eyebrows arching skyward.

_What’s your plan?_

_Do you know how to drop someone?_ Jared queried.

“Why would I want to do that. It’s a disgusting bit of power; don’t think it couldn’t happen…” Jensen was protesting out loud.

“Could you do it, or teach me how to do it—” Jared began, _—on a large scale?_

_What? Why?_

_Can you drop them and not drop us?_ Jared continued.

“You sure you want to know this?” Jensen asked, uncertain.

_Do you trust me?_ was Jared’s reply.

_Yes, but I don’t know my own mind right now. They rebooted me and hammered on me for hours? Days? If you’re still you, I trust you,_ Jensen countered, sounding very suspicious.

_It’s our way out, but,_ Jared continued aloud, “We’ve got to do this quickly, I have no doubt they’ll be here any minute to cart you away.”

Jensen stood from his bench and stepped up to the invisible divider. “Come closer,” he beckoned.

Jared felt like he was already as close as he could possibly get. 

_You need to put your hands on the barrier?_

Jared’s shock rippled between them. If he wanted Jensen to trust him, the trust could go both ways. 

“Okay,” he said aloud. _Now, tell me what to do, but I need you to drop everyone around you, everyone you can find._

Jensen nodded. He instructed Jared to press his hands to the barrier on three. They counted down the seconds, in their heads.

When Jared finally pressed his hands to the barrier, it hurt almost as much as he expected. He was distinctly aware of his lungs not moving. But he could _almost_ feel Jensen doing the same thing on the other side. 

There was also a funny twitch in his head, as if his brain kept trying to shut down, blink out, a push of sorts from the same place he thought of feeling the knock when someone wanted to talk to him, but the pain and electricity of the barrier overwhelmed it, and nothing happened.

After at least 45 seconds, he was seeing spots and stars in his eyes because of the prolonged time without air. Jensen finally gave the command for him to pull his hands away. _Let go._

They both stepped back at the same time, pulling with all their might. Jared fell to the ground, and for a minute he was sure he would die. He would pass out before his lungs ever drew air. But then there was pressure in his mind, and a strange noise, like commotion, but not really, just unexpected sounds, and then Jensen’s hands were on him. The barrier had finally succumbed to the unexpected pressure and shorted out. Jensen was above him, breathing air into his lungs. It was, strangely intimate. And he felt his attraction awaken again. He just hoped his body would at some point be able to get with the program.

After another moment, Jared coughed and sputtered, his diaphragm finally recovering from its literal shock.

“What’s your plan?” Jensen asked aloud, his voice rusty with pain.

“I don’t know who I really am. You don’t know if you’re guilty. There may be answers, there may not be. But someone is pulling all our strings, and if there’s any chance of finding out, I want to do it,” Jared answered.

“They’ll hunt you, like they’ve hunted me,” Jensen said quietly. 

“They’d haunt me, otherwise. I would never trust myself again,” Jared admitted. “Will you teach me, how to block it out. How to resist. I know you’ve learned more since Minkata.”

Jensen just nodded. “Where will we go?”

“There are two places that might hold the answers, if they exist. One of them, still bears your father’s name—it’s the archive Felicia went to—Sheppard, my boss, helped me figure it out, the other is buried five levels below the base of the Minkata crater,” Jared said.

Jensen looked at him for a moment, smiled and took his hand. They might never find the answers, but they would be in this, together. And that was a lot better than where either of them had been before.

“Let’s go.”


	7. Epilogue

Epilogue

“It’s the third report this week, sir,” Smith said approaching Sheppard’s desk.

Sheppard looked up at the hardcopy report, scowled briefly, and added it to the stack on his desk.

“And this time they’re in Minkata?”

The last two reports had involved sightings of people believed to be Ackles, Padalecki, and or Day, but every witness had a different story of the events, and no one had seen where they had gone.

“The Minkabra crater,” Smith answered. “I didn’t even know if was safe. I heard there are gravimetric distortions and—”

“Not safe for humans doesn’t mean a bunch of determined Pios with nothing to lose wouldn’t brave it,” Sheppard answered. 

Smith just scowled. “Sir?”

“You’re dismissed,” Sheppard said, waving his hand at the door. 

When he was alone and the door had locked and security activated, he let out a long sigh, rubbing his temples. Jared had warned them they were going digging in the Central Authority archives at the base of Minkabra. Sheppard almost regretted teaching Jared about his “silent” architecture or the telepathic communication techniques that were possible with it. Jared had taken to long-range telepathy like a duck to water, as the old-Earth saying went, and Sheppard had already been treated to two colorful broadcasts with updates. There were architecture control files on hard copy at the archive. Many had survived the blast. It didn’t add much clarity to who made the call about the Citygate singularity bomb—had Jeff tried to take out the archives, had Jensen made the call and _moved_ the target to save the archives. Was someone else trying to lead everyone to believe the archives were destroyed or inaccessible? If enough data survived, it was possible the answer might lie within, or they might never know.

The trio had also found testing equipment. _Central Authority_ testing equipment, the hard-wired, western-blot-producing type that was difficult to fool, not the digital version the Agency used. Jared wanted to know once and for all if he was a Pio or human, and the equipment was their best chance. 

Sheppard just hoped the answer brought Jared some closure. He missed having his best agent around, but as someone who’d lived the same uncertainty for as long as he could remember, the loss of a great agent was more than worth the possibility of upending the uncertainty that had ruled every life on New Terra for far too long.

Together, Jensen, Jared, and maybe even Felicia could do that. Sheppard was certainly going to cheer them on.

The end?

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [Wendy](http://wendy.livejournal.com) the awesome mod of [spn_j2_bigbang](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com) for another wonderful challenge.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, Carlos, for reading through my frantic scribblings and last-minute editing requests and whipping this story into shape. I struggled with writer's block on the rewrites for this story (in addition to changing my BB plot at the last. possible. minute). As always, I continue tinkering with my story up until the last minute, and all remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> Thank you also to my awesome artist [lightthesparks](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com) for all the beautiful art! If you haven't checked out the art post yet, do it now! I love her work, and I am so impressed with how she translated my concepts into beautiful visuals.
> 
> Now, the following contains spoilers for the fic, so don't read any further if you haven't finished the story. 
> 
> First of all, the "rape/noncon" is implied, offscreen, and nongraphic.
> 
>  
> 
> Finally, this story is (perhaps annoyingly) open ended and, yes, our main characters don't know for sure whether Jensen is guilty or innocent or somewhere in between. They don't know, so we don't know. But I think _Jared_ realizes the more important thing is who Jensen is now, what he believes, and what he's willing to do to avoid being used as a pawn.
> 
> As for Jared... is he part Pio, or is he human, and his government is just that desperate to have control that they are willing to use their tech on anyone? Our protagonists are looking for the answer, but Jared's history is just as uncertain as Jensen's. Maybe their investigation will lead them to the truth, maybe not. Maybe there _is_ no truth, none that can be verified, anyway. If everyone can change everyone else's memories, or make them do things they wouldn't otherwise do, who knows what's real? All our heroes can do is choose a path and forge ahead.
> 
> This story was inspired by a hodge-podge of sci-fi and political thrillers, including "The Americans" and _Wing Commander_ (yes, I really said those two things together; my mind can be a little odd sometimes). I had enough ideas to turn this into a sprawling epic, but not enough time (thank you RL and writers' block) to realize anything on that scope, so I've pared the story down to its base elements and hope the result is thought-provoking and intriguing.
> 
> Thank you for reading and (I hope) enjoying.


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